Here We Go: In The Wake Of The Kawhi Leonard Scandal, There's Reportedly Another NBA Team That Helped Set Up A $150K Endorsement Deal To Land A Free Agent And Circumvent The Salary Cap

Derick E. Hingle. Getty Images.

When the Kawhi Leonard Scandal first broke, as shocking as all of that reporting was, part of what made it such a big deal is we all knew it was only the beginning. While the Clippers may have "allegedly" been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, you were kidding yourself if you didn't think there were going to be more "reports" of equally suspicious activity. Now that the seal had been broken, it was only a matter of time before we heard about additional cases. I'm not suggesting every team in the league was going as far as the Clippers and Steve Ballmer may have gone, but it wouldn't shock me at all if there was more fishy business happening behind the scenes when it comes to NBA teams and potential free agents.

Based on the reporting from Howard Beck, another longtime and well-respected NBA reporter, we're off and running.

Yes, some relatively modest cap circumvention does happen.

A team might ask a player’s agent to exercise an early-termination option—or forgo the opt-out—with verbal promises of a future payday. A player might get access to the owner’s private jet or get a free car from a local dealership that does business with the franchise. 

Here’s how it worked in one recent instance, as relayed by a team source: A team needed to come up with an extra $150,000 to persuade a free agent to sign. So the GM arranged a $150,000 deal between the player and a local business, requiring the player to make a certain number of promotional appearances. (The team got the player.)

Uhhhh, that feels……not great! That seems like a pretty clear cut to circumvent the salary cap to me, and while I admit I am a moron, I'm pretty sure you can't do that. While $150K may not seem like a ton of money on the surface, when you're dealing with a salary cap and then ensuing luxury tax/apron penalties, $150K matters. If you can land a player in free agency and not have that money on the books and instead get it to him through a local sponsorship deal, that's an issue. 

Why?

Well let's team operated under the rules and needed to free up that $150K from their salary cap number. That could very well mean having to cut a player, or maybe trade a player along with draft capital to a team that would take in that money and not send anything back. The point is, their roster would take a hit in some way.

If you don't have to make those tough choices, it undermines the entire point of the cap and these penalties. When you have some teams following those rules and other teams finding work arounds, you can see the issue here when it comes to competitive balance. That's why this Kawhi stuff is such a huge deal, and why even something small like that $150K endorsement deal is still a big deal. 

This is the part of the Clippers scandal that I'm most interested in. Do you think Steve Ballmer is going to just sit back and let this happen to his team and not air out all the other dirty laundry in the league? The fuck does he care? If he's going down, you may as well take everyone down too. That's why teams around the league have to be a little nervous of how this all shakes out, because surely there are other teams out there with skeletons in their closet.

Advertisement

All I know is now that the cat is out of the bag, my guess is we're going to be getting more and more of these "reports". There's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. All you can really do is brace yourself and pray your favorite team didn't go down this path, because you know Adam Silver will be dropping the hammer when it comes to this stuff. He has no choice.