Adam Silver

I'm like, "Who's the designated survivor? Who's back in New York?" Uh, but the entire league office basically had come to, to Europe to have meetings, um, with all kinds of stakeholders.

And from that on- going onward, I mean, Adam Silver has discussed the concept of this going way back, but that really sort of was the, the moment for me, you know, sitting there in the room in Paris, that this was, like, going forward.

And they were working with FIBA on this.

FIBA officials were coming to NBA owners meetings and giving presentations.

Chus Bueno, who is the, um, new CEO, he used to work, uh, in the NBA, uh, with the NBA.

Uh, he just was named, I think, earlier this year.

Um, uh, and, um, so-- And he has basically said, "I am open to working with the NBA, uh, but we could go it alone." And Adam Silver and Mark Tatum have basically said the same thing, "We could work with EuroLeague, or we could go it alone." And so in the coming weeks here, maybe coming days, um, there's basically probably going to be a decision about whether there's going to be a marriage or a battle.

[chuckles] Um-

It's just gonna be interesting.

I think it'll tell us a lot about, like, what Adam Silver-

Yes

... wants the next decade of WNBA stewardship to look like, how much the players were consulted in all of that.

Has it changed today? If I'm advising the NBA, and should I get a call today from Mr.

Silver, I would say, "Adam, whatever it is that you thought you had in leverage over Steve, it is now quadrupled.

The fact that the Eastern District has opened an investigation has opened the door for you to call Steve and say, 'You know what? Forget the fact that I don't want you to sue the NBA and then I'll approve your deal.

No.

Oliver, "What a mess." So part of this also is, is about the lawsuit that you just heard David Samson talk about.

There is a lot of reporting that Steve Ballmer is threatening a massive lawsuit on the NBA.

And Adam Silver, the commissioner of NBA, is like, "Don't even think about it." It is quite the world to...

'Cause right now, Steve Ballmer's de- dealing with other civil litigation off of the Aspiration bankruptcy.

I'm like, "Who's the designated survivor? Who's back in New York?" But the entire league office basically had come to, to Europe to have meetings, um, with all kinds of stakeholders.

And from that on- going onward, I mean, Adam Silver has discussed the concept of this going way back, but that really sort of was the, the, the moment for me, you know, sitting there in the room in Paris, that this was, like, going forward.

And they were working with FIBA on this.

FIBA officials were coming to NBA owners meetings and giving presentations.

Chus Bueno, who is the, uh, new CEO, he used to work, uh, in the NBA, uh, with the NBA.

Uh, he just was named, I think, earlier this year.

Um, uh, and, um, so-- And he has basically said, "I am open to working with the NBA, uh, but we could go it alone." And Adam Silver and Mark Tatum have basically said the same thing, "We could work with EuroLeague, or we could go it alone." And so in the coming weeks here, maybe coming days, um, there's basically probably going to be a decision about whether there's going to be a marriage or a battle.

[chuckles] Um-

Uh, that's where it was yesterday.

And so to give you a little bit more on this from Michael Schmidt, William Rashbaum, and Sentul Nakar, "Authorities began scrutinizing the matter before the NBA leveled a series of severe punishments last week against the Clippers, their owner, and two top executives after a law firm working for the NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver concluded that the team had engaged in a wide-ranging effort to break its rules.

The scope of the inquiry targets and the possible crimes being examined were unclear," uh, goes on the, the piece to explain, "but prosecutors have issued at least one subpoena as part of the investigation, according to the two people.

Spokesman for the US Attorney's Office declined to comment.

The...

The authorities began scrutinizing the matter before the NBA leveled a series of severe punishments last week against the Clippers, its owner, and two top executives after a law firm working for the NBA and its commissioner, Adam Silver, concluded that the team had engaged in a wide-ranging effort to break its rules.

So it's more like these no-show contracts that I believe there were four of them connected to Kawhi Leonard.

A byproduct of that was circumventing the cap, but creating these contracts that had no So they were fake deals.

Kawhi is, without a doubt, getting off way too easy.

This is now just another era of Adam Silver's player empowerment league that, okay, Kawhi, we're going to punish the Clippers for the next five years of assets, but you're going to get a $700,000 fine when you likely made over $50 million in other areas that were not through what the league is looking for in terms of the cap and how they pay players.

And so...

It's just a crazy story.

LA, sorry about you.

And that's sort of how I feel about it.

And I think it is, you mentioned player empowerment from Adam Silver and all that.

If you're going to suspend owners, front office managers, you know, fines with picks and all these things, $700,000 to a max level NBA player who just got funneled an extra 50 plus million through these phony deals.

They're kind of in salary cap hell.

I'm curious, if they had won a title, what Silver would have done with it? Do you just strip it from the record books? I mean, we'll never get there, but that's a big what if that we could have been on the fence of.

Yeah, I think that would have been the biggest red flag.

And I think that would have, I think, taken it a little bit further.

But we've mentioned it's going to be pretty difficult for him.

I mean, being under an NBA constitution, you know, we talk about the NCAA bylaws, NFL constitution, like the commissioners of all of these generally have sweeping authority and a lot of their rulings, especially within their own leagues.

final and binding if they want it to be so outside of something like fraud or bias or acting out like if Adam Silver was acting outside of his powers, which here is absolutely not outside of a maybe bias question.

I don't, I just don't see it really being possible for bomber to any for any of this to be, you know, brought back for him.

Also, if that's your operating principle here, I don't think...

Adam Silver wants that to happen either.

I've

seen this one theory going around that Adam Silver isn't going to okay this trade because he doesn't want any picks going to the Clippers.

Again, when this is settled and the dust is cleared, The Clippers are going to get some of those picks back because you can't have a team in the wilderness for a decade, especially in that market that just spent a quadrillion dollars on a new building.

Yeah.

I think Adam Silver wants this to go through.

He wants Kawhi to be in Toronto.