Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective - Where Do The Clippers Go From Here? Steve Ballmer Sit Down Reaction

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Brian Windhorst is joined by ESPN's Tim Bontemps, Tim MacMahon and Ramona Shelburne to react to Ramona’s sit down with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer regarding the allegations of circumventing the NBA's salary cap with Kawhi Leonard & Aspiration. The crew discusses what Pablo Torre’s report means for the Clippers moving forward and where the league goes from here. Then, we talk Cam Thomas’ interesting return to the Nets, another format change for the All-Star game and if there is anything more to LeBron’s latest commercial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Hello, welcome to the Hoop Collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, which we're doing late on Thursday evening in a surprise situation here. But first off, joining us from New York City is Tim Bontems.

Hello, everybody. Joining us from Bristol, Connecticut, I guess you're down the road from Bristol, Connecticut. Band McMahon. I don't hear him. I don't hear him. He's been band's newfangled microphone. Howdy, partners? That was a technological issue that.

crept out of the pod. Usually that's just secret things that happened before the pod starts. All right. And that voice is joining us from a green room at ESPN headquarters in Bristol. We did not expect to have Ramona Shelburne on tonight, but we had a little news event, and we're going to talk about it in a moment. But Ramona, welcome to the Hoot Collective. Thanks, guys. Okay, so tonight, we're doing this almost at midnight here on Thursday night. you interviewed Steve Balmer in the wake of Pablo Torre's I can say explosive, explosive podcast. A bombshell, I will go.

Yeah, about Kauai Leonard and an endorsement deal with an environmental startup, I guess I could say. Green bank. I would say a deal. No endorse the deal. Yeah, they wish they were Finitech. Okay, so Ramona, Steve Palmer came to ESPN's campus tonight. Like it was 1994, you know, and we didn't have, you know, locations in major cities. He came to ESPN's campus because he wanted to answer on camera what was in this Pablo Torre story.

And so you did the interview. It debuted on Scott Van Pelt last night. on various shows today. Tell us what Steve Balmer said. Well, I think he understands like everyone else does, that when you issue a statement, even two statements like they did yesterday, it's different than saying it in your own words.

Then when you have an impartial journalist who's going to grow you on everything that's in that podcast, everything, all the allegations, it's different when you sit in the hot seat. And I think it was important to him to come on to the stage, come into the studio. And I think there's a, you know, he had a message clearly that he wanted to deliver, which is that they don't believe they did anything wrong here.

He did say, which I thought was the news of the interview, that they did make an introduction between Kauai Leonard and this corporation, this company called Aspiration. It's now bankrupt. The co-founder pled guilty to fraud last month in court. But he did say they did make an introduction. between them. And he says that's allowed. You're allowed to introduce players to your team sponsors. And at one point in the interview, I said, well, do you think it should be allowed? I mean, because of this

appearance of impropriety. And he said, I don't know, that's an interesting question. That's up to the league. I think it's worked fairly well because you don't want to deprive your sponsors of the opportunity to talk to your star players and you don't want to deprive your players of any money. But, you know, as far as he was concerned, he made an introduction. And he says, and I thought, this was interesting too. He said he had actually been reviewing their relationship with this company because they had been cooperating with the Department of Justice investigation into aspiration. And so he said, I know the exact email we sent making the introduction, which was in November of 2021. And I think, you know, the timeline here is important, Brian.

Kauai Leonard signs this four-year extension, max extension, in August of 2021. This is the summer he's coming off in ACL injury. This is also when the Clippers had just gone to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in their history. And so it was sort of a, he's going to be out all next year, but here's your Max Deal. Thank you, you know, for your service. We believe in you. Then in September, they announced a $330 million sponsorship deal with Aspiration. He also told me tonight that Aspiration had wanted to be the naming rights deal, wanted a naming rights deal for what became the Intuit Dome. He said they offered even more money than Intuit, but that Balmer preferred into it as the naming partner of the new dome. And he said, that was one of

the largest sponsorship deals they'd ever had. And I said, well, you know, did you have any knowledge of the deal they ended up doing with Kauai? And he said, we made the introduction and then they were off to the races. And he said, that introduction happened in November. So August is when he signed the deal. September is when they do the team sponsorship. November is when they make the introduction to Kauai Leonard. And subsequently, as Pablo very, you know, very unearthed in all those documents, shortly thereafter is when Kauai sets up this LLC called KL Aspire. Yeah.

So I think a couple of things that are important to point out, it may seem basic to us because it's what we do, but I just want to, for the listener, Kawhi signed with the Clippers in 2019. Correct. I don't even know if Aspire. or aspiration was even a company yet. Yeah. The, the, the, he, that, you know, nothing to do with it. However, in 2019, the league did investigate, um, whether or not there was salary cap

circumvention going on and the clippers were cleared. Correct. This is, they did again in 2020, by the way, also when a lawsuit was filed by Johnny Wilkes saying Jerry West paid him money for him. Right. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to go. go over all that later. I just want to talk about your discussion with, with Balmer. But just this is, you know, there's been accusations in the past about how the

clippers acquire or, you know, got him to go to them because it was stunning at the time, obviously. But this, this is two years later. And so you asked Steve Ballmer, I mean, one of the things about this thing that's so compelling, I think there's two things that are very compelling. And if you think, I'm wrong, let's think. One is, is that, okay, he does an endorsement deal with, with a team, a team sponsor. He didn't do any endorsing. Right. It was never even announced. Yeah. That's the thing. It is not an endorsement deal because there was no endorsing. Right. And that's a good point, Ramona. Like, it's not enough. Like, it's one thing, like, obviously this company was bleeped up. Yeah. And there was a lot of stuff going on. So,

Like the idea that they might sign somebody and then never use him, even though I know it's fishy, you could present it as just incompetence. Like incompetence has been used as a defense as long as there's been human history. But as you said, McMahon, it wasn't even announced. I mean, part of the reason. And it's $28 million. How many guys have $28 million shoe deals? Yeah, exactly. So two things to me that stick out here as fish.

one that they do this deal and it's never announced the entire concept of it was to be marketing and it would be one thing if the company like signed a bunch of people and like had a you know 2025 marketing plan where they were going to roll out all these celebrities but they had other celebrities that they signed that they you know were using as marketers okay so that one is that they sign them to a deal and then never announce it never use them and never announce it when they were in business up to their eyeballs with the Clippers. As you mentioned, a $300 sponsorship. They were on the Jersey patch.

30 million. Yeah. They were all over the Clippers situation. If they had an association with Kauai Leonard, you certainly think that they would at least announce it. Okay, the second thing is four years and 28 million. And there's been some other reporting today that it was worth more. But I'm just going to look at what Pablo reported was in the,

he had leaked to him the actual document. that in talking to some agents is not a market figure for this type of endorsement. As you said, McMahon, this is the type of endorsement. Like a superstar player would get with a shoe company. Even if you had your own shoe, you might not even get $7 million a year. Right. And so it was, so the amount was out of line. So, okay, so you asked Balmer about that.

What did he say, Ramon? He said, I own less than 3% of this company. I had no control over what they did. I don't know that anyone had control over it. He goes, there was a fraudulent company. He goes, you know, I said, well, why do you think they gave him all the money? Right. Like, why do you think they would give him that big of a deal?

And he said, I don't want to speculate on that. I don't know. I didn't even know how much money they gave him. I didn't, you know, we introduced them and they did their thing. And, you know, I think the I don't know answers, you know, that's the, I guess that's where you go. I, we have to just accept that for what it is unless there's a document or more documents proving that he did, which I'm sure the league will be looking for, right? That's where this goes next is, okay, you said you didn't know how much they gave him or there's no paper. We'll, we'll find out now.

So what he's claiming there is plausible deniability. I don't know. Gee whiz, holy smokes. Who know? I had no idea. There's a long way from plausible deniability. And I think we're, you know, let's just grant that for the sake of argument. Long way from plausible deniability to provably false, which was the term.

Yeah, but, hold on. Hold on. I'm going to stop you right there. The burden isn't on him to do that. The burden on him. The burden would be on the league to prove it true, not on him to prove it false. I don't know. Well, maybe not the court of public opinion.

Yeah. Yeah. But in the court of, in the court of, this goes back to the overall question, right? Which is what's going to happen to the clips, right? That's what everybody wants to know. Well, we're going to happen to see. I know. I know.

But that's the central question to all of it. Right. And it's that question of that stuff. And Tim, and this is a good point. I said to him, and this was, you know, this was a question I got from a conversation I had with with Brian Winhorse here. I want to give all credit here. If this report had come out about another owner or another team, what would you think?

And he flat out said, I would want the league to investigate because these rules are important. I've talked to folks around the league who certainly feel that way. And I think the Board of Governors, you say the Court of Public Opinion, forget that, the Court of the Board of Governors meeting. Who meet in five days, by the way. Yes. Meet next week here in New York. See Balmer will be here for that. It'll be very interesting to see how that goes.

And if there's how much, it's one thing for other owners, governors, those type of folks to say something, you know, on background. Is there going to be real pressure put on when they all get in the same room? That's going to be interesting. Well, Adam Silver will speak to the media next week and we'll see what he says. I do want to read the quote that Ramona just referenced so that we have it here. You asked him if there was another team or owner who had been sort of accused of this. He said, quote, I'd want the league to investigate, take it seriously. Salary cap circumvention rules are important to the league, and I'd want the league to investigate.

And he said this several times. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Ramona, you said at the beginning, Palmer clearly had a message she wanted to deliver. And obviously, you agree to do this interview because that's the case. It was very clear reading through the interview what I think the overall message was, which to me was, I believe in the rules, which he seemed to go back to over and over and over again.

Is that your takeaway on that, at least in an attempt to create a defense for himself? I do, yes. And I do believe that he said at the end, you know, kind of at the end of the interview, I was sort of wrapping up and he's wanted to get in one last thing, which is that he feels really bad for the employees of the clippers. He feels bad for their fans, you know, that they are in the middle of this. And I think he's embarrassed at his involvement with this company. I mean, look, I flat out said to him in the interview, Steve, you're one of the richest men in America. And you've made a lot of investment. You read all their financials. You read their business plan. You didn't get any whiff that this was a fraudulent company. Like you didn't pick up on that. You know, I mean, he's a pretty smart guy here. And he goes, no, I didn't.

And a lot of other people didn't. And he goes, I'm embarrassed. I should have. I reviewed it. And I was reviewing fraudulent documents, you know, and, but I didn't pick up on it. And he used the word embarrassed two or three times that he didn't do that. He also, you know, I think it's, I think it's interesting because they, they, they had two statements when the first podcast came out. The first was a short one.

The second was a longer one that explained a lot of things. then I think he wanted, he really wants to tell his side of the story because I think these accusations bother him. And he repeated several times in the interview, you know, we try to do things on the up and up. It's important to us. The rules are important to us. We want our fans to know that we do things the right way. And I said, I said, I get that. But, you know, since 2017, Kauai Leonard has been involved in a lot of accusations, right? There's even back to with San Antonio days. There's been a lot of stories about this in 2019. And Uncle Dennis is right in the middle of this one too. Yeah. And I did say the NBA cleared

you in 2019, but since 2019, have you had, has he asked you for any, any extra benefits that would violate league rules? And he said, I was looking, I mean, you know, when they, when you do interviews, you're not supposed to ask yes or no question, but I actually wanted this to be a yes or no. I didn't get a yes or no. I didn't get a yes or no. I got a, they know the rules and we know the rules. And eventually he got there. I mean, eventually he does get there. I have to pull up the exact quote. When I read the transcript, they know the rules was the first way that he answered that. I said, that's not what she asked. So that's definitely one that I kind of in my impression. It's an important thing. Okay. I got it right here. Well, they know the rules.

They meaning Kauai and his representatives, including his uncle. We know the rules. And if anything It's not clear. We remind ourselves what the rules are and we make absolutely clear we're going to abide by those rules and they understand them as well. And it's important for them to abide by them, which they have. That's sort of a sort of a, yeah, that's not happened, but it's not a, it hasn't happened. Them asking doesn't break the rules. Yeah.

Only if you grant them. That's true. I guess that's true. A couple of points I want to make here. One, because you were talking about the timeline earlier, he told you that they, in their, in cooperating with the Justice Department, they reviewed all of their dockey, all of their back and forth with this company. And they found an email where they arranged the introduction to Dennis Robertson, Uncle Dennis and Kauai, to, aspiration and he says that that document proved that it was in November of 2021. Again, he signed the extension in August. They did the deal, the $300 million sponsorship deal. In September.

And they say they've got a piece of paper, you know, and again, whatever. And I think the reason that's relevant to that timeline is that the concept would be that the endorsement deal was an inducement to Kauai to extend his contract. And that would have been, you know, that's the type of thing that can be used to really target with punishment. And so he's, you know, he doesn't have to offer you a defense,

but he's offering up, you know, sort of defense exhibit A there. He said that. The second thing is when it comes to the $50 million in him saying he was embarrassed, he says, he tells you in this interview that he and his family are very much into, you know,

clean energy. Listen, they don't even allow paper at the Clippers facilities. Like they're there. Yeah, I know. You know,

let me just say. How many trees got to be planted to offset the carbon from flying across the country of these interview? I know. Like the NBA used to do green week. Yeah.

And I understand it's about awareness. It's about sending a message. NBA teams, they have a tough position defending being green. I'm just, I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm not going to go further.

You know, it was green in the bubble. Nobody traveled anywhere in every day. You're right. All right. So, but he said he said he and his family are passionate about this and that he and his family liked this company and wanted to invest in it. And I, and so you may say, well, $50 million. Well, $50 million is just 5% of what.

No, less than three. Of five percent of what he makes on my. Microsoft stock dividends in a year. Okay. It makes a billion dollars a year on Microsoft stock dividends. It's 5%. And this was a write-off that was handled like that. That doesn't mean that it's nothing. It's just that like, you know, you have to put it in perspective. It's a rounding air. Right. Because the reason I'm saying this is not to defend them, but just to give perspective that you say, well, if you really knew what was going on with the company or didn't know was going out with the company. How could you invest 50 million? The answer is he invested 50 million

because it's nothing to him. And he kind of liked it. And you might say, how could you not do your due diligence? Because it's literally nothing to them. It's like, did you do your due diligence on the Mexican restaurant where you had dinner tonight? Did you read the Yelp reviews? Yes. No, I didn't. It was just terrible food. We'll never go back. Okay, well, what about that $250 you spent on the family dinner? Well, okay, but I'll push back a little. If you take $330 something million from a company and make them your jersey patch and they're a team sponsor, you're now associating your brand. Very fair, but I'm talking about his investment in the...

Yeah. And he does say, I own less than 3% of that company. So this idea that he controlled them to do it, you know, that he had a huge... Well, but he's a less than 3% is more than the 28 million. So, you know, I believe the reason that line was said was that if he owned more than 5% of the company, that would be something. that ran afoul of the rules. So I was not surprised to hear that in the store, in the interview, he made it clear that he

owned less than 5%. Because that is a threshold that if it was over that, that would have caused other issues. Yeah. So let's just give a hypothetical so people can understand this. Let's say you have a star player and they ask, they have a charity tournament, charity poker tournament or not a charity ping pong tournament. And they get all these sponsors and they're raising money for their charity or whatever it is. And they go to the owner and say, hey, do you use your company want to be a sponsor in my

tournament or in my fundraiser, my charity fundraiser? And the owner has to say no, because any money that the owner's company that gives this star player is that's illegal. You own more than 5% that would be a right. That is that is where the 5% thing came in. A team sponsor. Let's say let's use BBGO. That's the Lakers jersey patch. Okay. It's a Korean foods company. If they want to do a deal with Austin Reeves. They go, okay, we're going to pay Austin Reeves and, you know, $500,000 to be our endorser or whatever. He gets traded somewhere and BB goes, we don't want you as a sponsor anymore. I mean, I get that because his value to them as an endorser is his association with the team that they've sunk all this money into. And I think I'm, I don't want to speculate about what their

motivations were or even if this is all, okay, but on the face, like if you spend $330 million on a company, as a sponsor, you want a face to that sponsorship. You didn't get the new, you didn't get the dome, so you're going to get Kauai. This would be my read of it. But they didn't get Kauai. There is paid Kauai. So I, nobody was great. Yeah. Like if, you know, if, if a sponsor, if sponsor, if sponsor X sponsors a bowl game. Yeah. Okay. They, they don't necessarily get, they get to put their logo on the field. Okay. They may want to activate that sponsorship by also buying commercials during the bowl game. So sometimes you see, the only time you ever see commercials from a curtain company is during

their bowl game. Okay. So it is not unreasonable to want to sponsor a player on the team. And it is also not unreasonable. Like I know people are thinking that the fact that they said if Kauai left the team, in other words, like if he had demanded a trade or whatever, I actually, I don't care about that. I don't think that's significant.

I said at the beginning, the two things that are significant are that this salary for this contract are out of line, out of whack, and that it was never announced or used. To me, everything else is you don't even need a $5,000 an hour lawyer. Those are the two questions that need an explanation of some sort to get solved. And I will say, you know, in their statement, they said that they look forward to cooperating with the feds and the league investigation, okay, look forward to. So I asked Steve Balmer about that. Like, what are you looking forward to? Like, that, I mean, that doesn't sound like a fun process. You have to send, hand over your emails and you have to, you know, and you have to. Hand over your cell phone. Cell phone and all that. And he said, well, up front, I want to say that we, the clippers have abided by the South. cap circumvention rules because that's the right thing to do. We have done that.

That happened to think that's a very important rule in promoting competitiveness and equal playing field across a league. Okay. Hold on. Let me find another one. Let me find the rest of that answer. Hold on. Because I was like, this sounds like getting a root canal, right?

You got to turn over everything. And he basically, I think his answer is essentially, I'm going to paraphrase until I can find the exact quote. You know, he's saying, I want to clear my name. Like he's trying to say, you know. So what do we make of this real quick? Yeah. And then we'll let you go, Ramona, because it's late.

What do you make of the fact that he could? A lot of times we see powerful people in these situations where there's an investigation, they will say, we're going to let the investigation play out. You know, we did know wrong, we're going to let the investigation play out. Is it worth anything to you, Ramona? Is it worth anything to you guys that Balmer came to Bristol tonight, the day after this came out, whatever his plans were, came to Bristol, sat with you and vociferously denied this.

Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, I do think that's, look, you have choices when you're in these situations, right? You have people who give you advice and all that. I want to say that I think Pablo did an incredible podcast. He did an incredible amount of research on this story. And he knows it inside and out. I know from doing these types of investigations, there's a lot you write and a lot you don't write. So I think he, you know, he's, I don't know if he's committed all those 3,000 pages to memory. But, but I think that, you know, he could have just gone to talk to Pablo, right? That was a choice. He could have done a print interview. He could have let the

statement speak for itself. He could have, you know, I mean, mostly when I deal with lawyers, they, they tell you don't talk because you might say something incriminates yourself or whatever it is, right? So I appreciate that he sat in front of the hot lights, that he came into the studio. This wasn't done in secret. You know, he did it fast. He wants to go on the record and say all these things. He did offer some explanations. He offered some, you know, he offered the information that the league will certainly out. ask him to provide documentation on. And that's, you know, he says they're provably false. So I think now they have, if they want to prove them false, whether that be to the league or in the court of

public opinion, this was the first step. And we'll see what they do next. I would say Steve Ballmer agreeing to do this interview in the manner that he did is a pretty strong indication that he believes they're not going to get in trouble. Because if he really thought there was a chance they're going to get in trouble, I would assume he would be luring up and hiding. Yeah. Maybe he's, he's doing it. Yeah, you're exactly right, Bottoms. If he thought that this was going to come back to bite him, the comments that he made tonight to Ramona would go down, would live in infamy. They would be used over and over and over. For sure. And if he, if he was really worried that there was going to be a Joe Smith type punishment or something would happen. Well, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about all that. I know. I'm just saying. I think you asked what my takeaway was from him agreeing to do the interview. I think it's that. I think he believes that. whether it's because they did nothing wrong or no one's going to be able to find that they find a provable way of proving they did anything wrong or whatever the reason, he thinks that they're going to come out of this on the other side of it and it's going to be fine.

And I do think, because we mentioned it earlier, I did think it was interesting when Ramona asked him about the board of governors and said, hey, like, how do you think your fellow owners are going to approach you next week? He said, I don't know. I hope they'll have faith and confidence in me, the folks who've gotten to know me, but I can't predict that, which I thought was an interesting answer. That was an interesting and honest answer. And I think that someone who will be at the luxury hotel in Midtown where they always have this shindig every two or three times a year. It will be very interesting to see what the tenor of the discussions are and what Adam Silver, obviously he will hide behind lawyerly statements until there's something to say, almost certainly, given Adam's general approach to. things as a lawyer and a very good one. But it will be very interesting to see what the tenor of those discussions are in light of all of this. All right, Ramona, thank you so much for stopping by.

Great job handling this hot potato. When you came to Bristol, this was not on my agenda. You were not scheduled to quote unquote work. I mean, I guess you were having meetings. I have my dress picked out to go to Woj's Hall of Fame induction tomorrow today. whatever day it is. And I had one outfit that could pass for a television outfit because I was going to be walking around the office today. And the rest of it is just travel clothes. So no, this was not scheduled.

All right. Well, thank you for stopping by. And we look forward to more reporting on this. Thanks, guys. More Hoop Collective Podcast after this. Okay, thank you very much to Ramona. Okay, before we move on some other stuff, I just want to say a few things here.

and you guys as well. I found Pablo's podcast to be compelling and circumstantial for the folks who immediately jumped to comparing it to Joe Smith back in 2001. I'm sorry, I don't agree. I don't think I think the accusation is similar, but I don't think the situation is exactly the same. In that case, they had smoking gun documentation. There was literally a piece of paper that said, this is what we're going to do. And by the way, and we're not going to rehash that case right now, but the reason that that piece of paper became on earth was because Joe Smith's agents went to legal war with each other,

and it was popped up in the discovery. Here, this, I may have come out anyway because there were disgruntled employees that knew about this, that had their, you know, lost their jobs and were just spilled out onto the street. But the reason this happened was because this company went bankrupt and paperwork sort of got out in the public. So both cases are similar in that regard.

What Pablo has presented, again, is compelling, but it does not have a smoking gun. I am not saying that a smoking gun doesn't exist, nor am I saying that the clippers are innocent, but I am just saying that it doesn't have a smoking gun. The second thing I'm going to say, before I turn it over to you guys, since, even before Kauai signed with the clippers,

He has been a legal and health headache. All the way back in May of 2019, he signed in July. Doc Rivers, the then coach, was fined 50 grand for making tampering comments in an interview with Magic Johnson for ESPN. And I remember Adam Silver said that he crossed a bright line by like praising Kauai like he did. That was before. They towed the line the whole previous season, by the way. Correct.

That's not even counting them. Lawrence Frank going around personally scouting all of his games. Yes, but I'm talking about like, NBA or legal actions. Okay. Then he comes there. The Raptors are incensed and are speaking to many people at the sides of their mouths about these accusations about special benefits. The NBA investigates.

The clippers defend themselves. The NBA finds nothing. They get a tis-tis-stern warning. Nemblea finds nothing. Then, 2020, mid-pandemic, this guy who was Uncle Dennis's high school teammate, this guy named Johnny Wilkes, his name is not important. He sues Jerry West, who was working for the Clippers at the time and the Clippers for several million dollars saying, I arranged tampering and I arranged a backdoor deal to get Kauai,

and you promised me a bunch of money. The Clippers defend themselves in that lawsuit. For two years, a judge dismisses it. And then they appeal. Judge dismisses it, okay? Then last year, a former team employee, a workout coach, a guy, this guy, Randy Shelton,

who worked with Kauai when he was at San Diego State, he sues the Clippers and Lawrence Frank, um, uh, claiming that they, that he was involved in, in tampering for them for Kauai, and they mishandled Kauai's knee as something.

And the clippers say, no, he's shaking us down. That lawsuit is still ongoing. So since the clippers have signed Kauai Leonard, forget what they gave up to get Paul George. Yeah. Just right. That ground has been covered. Never mind that the return just was the foundation

of a championship team and a potential dynasty. That path has been worn. We know that. One of my colleagues here at ESPN pointed this out. Since the minute they signed him, the clippers have been paying legal fees. Literally, there's either been an NBA

investigation or a lawsuit ongoing for the entire time Kauai Leonard has been a clipper. Not to mention they've paid him $244 million in salary. Not to mention he's had three knee surgeries and missed 100-something games.

And not to mention they've won three playoff series when he's played three. And how's all you got to say. How many post seasons has he finished healthy? All you got to say is three playoff series victories, four combined lawsuits and investigations, including this one since the sign. So you've got to say.

So I'm just going to say, and by the way, like, I know that there has been a rush to judgment to throw the book at them. It's not like this is the Astros. They have not won anything. Okay. Bon Temps, I yield.

Well, and it's also not the Astros because there was evidence that was found that clearly implicated the Astros in the sign stealing stuff. Like they nailed them on. It was a smoking gun. Yes. Now, I think it's very important. McMahon, you made, I thought, a very, I think the central point in all of this earlier, when you said there's a big gap between plausible deniability and what the Clippers said,

which is provably false, right? What I would say, though, is what Brian followed up with, is what actually is going to determine the level of punishment here, which is the Quippers have plausible deniability as of now. There is not the piece of paper or the evidence that says they absolutely did this. It all looks fishy. A lot of it doesn't look great. You guys laid out all the stuff with the numbers. I'm not sitting here trying to say the Clippers are innocent. But you can't just say, well, it looks kind of, it looks kind of bad or it looks bad. We're going to throw the book app. That's not the laws, even in the NBA where you're talking about, just hold on, even in the NBA where you're talking about like this isn't like a court of law, right? The league is still governed by law, by laws and rules. And Adam Silver can't necessarily just say, well, I don't like how this looks. So I'm throwing the book at it. Now, I'm not sitting here saying that to say that I'm positive that nothing went on here. But I think to Brian's point about the rusted judgment.

I am not sitting here right now thinking it's very likely this is going to land in a Joe Smith kind of territory. We're talking about three, I think it was three or four first round picks and multiple suspensions, all this stuff. Like it feels like this is going to be far less than that because, again, to go back to the question of why did C. Balmer do this interview, I think he did this interview because whether he did anything or not, he's certain in his mind at least that there's not going to be some smoking. gun that's going to come up and nail him and the clippers to the wall. And so they're not going to have to pay some kind of crazy price. And if it does, and if it does, we'll have a different conversation. Yeah, absolutely.

Let's just be clear about one thing. This doesn't look kind of bad. This reeks. It smells worse than Paul Pierce's shorts after his finals wheelchair ride. Oh, my God. Okay. I'm waiting all day for that one. He's had it ready.

You know, McMahon has a line ready. I'm not sitting here trying to defend the clippers, again, to reiterate. I am not saying the clippers are innocent. I'm not saying nothing went on here. Any of that. To be clear. I think this is, and we're not going to sit here and discuss what the punishment may or may not be before the investigation has really started. I think the question here is, is this going to be a real investigation?

or is this going to, you know, is this going to be kind of, oh, we investigated, nothing, how intense is the investigation going to be? I don't think that the court of public opinion, well, I shouldn't say that because I do think there have been times in the past where Adam Silver has been significantly influenced by the court of public opinion. What I would say is, I think the opinions of the 29 other governors are going to have significant say, significant influence, especially if that board of governor's meeting coming up here gets heated. I think Adam Silver might be pushed into doing something I'm guessing he probably

doesn't want to do. You know, and it's interesting. Adam Silver's first big move, new sheriff in town, oh, he went hard after Donald Sterling. Let's be honest, that's an easy thing to do. Donald Sterling is one of the most unpopular figures in the history of the NBA. Nobody wanted Donald Sterling in the league. Steve Ballmer, everybody loves Balmer. He's, you know, he's enthusiastic. He's, you know, he's fun. He's, you know, he's great for the league.

He's, you know, a great partner, all these things. It would be much more difficult to really dig in and, if necessary, bring the hammer down on Steve Ballmer. That's all fine, but that's all secondary. to what the evidence is. And I'm just telling you. How hard are they going to look is the question? Listen, man, I'm just telling you. I don't know what is not public,

but what is public is not enough. I'm just telling you. I'm not trying to defend him. I'm just telling you. I look forward to hearing Kauai's, however he avoids this question. Well, you shouldn't look forward to it because you know he's not going to say anything.

Let me just ask you this. How the hell do you explain the very clear language in that contract that Pablo went over word for word, that basically says, Kauai, you're guaranteed $28 million and you don't have to do squat, which Kauai did exactly that. That's fine. That's fine. Again, all of that is compelling, but it does not meet what's going to have to be the standard here. That is a negotiation between Kauai and that company.

And if you can't prove that the clippers were in control there, then you're not going to get this, this hammer that everybody's talking about. I just, I am seeing my brethren in the media. I am, you know, I don't care what fans say.

Of course, you know, but I'm seeing my brethren in the media who understand things, who've watched the league for decades. There, there is not a smoking gun here. And like, here's a thing.

Not as of, as of this moment. As of right now. As of what I know right now. No, I'm just saying that to add it. Like as of today. This is the same thing.

To a certain extent, there is a difference between what happened to Robert Sarver and what happened to Donald Sterling. In the case of Donald Sterling, the league banned him because they had audio evidence of stuff that he said, okay? In the case of Robert Sarver, they suspended him and censured him.

He decided to sell the team. They didn't do that. He decided he was uncomfortable and want it out. Yeah, under duress, but yes. Okay, fine. Dress doesn't mean they had to do it. So what I'm saying is that there was a lack of a smoking gun in the Sarva situation,

and there's a lack of a smoking gun for what we have here. So I'm just saying the rush to an assumption that this is going to historically rival. I mean, I've got people suggesting that they're going to lose the All-Star game. Come on, guys. Well, listen, this all goes back also to the other part of this. that's worth laying out, right? Which is you went through the timeline of events before, of all the things that have gone on with Kauai

since before he was a clipper, even, and as he was in a clip. And the clippers have won every single one of these. Yes, they have. But the reason this Pablo podcast struck the nerve that it did is because for damn near a decade, Kauai Leonard has been involved in one controversy after another, going all the way back to when he decided he was just done playing for the spurs to when he got traded

to the Raptors and nobody knew if he was going to show up to then be in the first person to ever win finals MVP and win a title and then leaving free agency to then getting the clippers to trade everything they had nailed down to get Paul George to come play with them to go to the clippers or else he was going to go to the Lakers to then all of the injuries he's had with the Clippers, to all of the off-court drama he's had with the Clippers, to disappearing from a full season with an ACL tear that was never announced, saying it was day-to-day for months with an ACL-Tare, right? All of these different things for the better part of a decade had been wrapped up in the mystery and in the enigma that is Kauai Leonard. And for the entire

time he's been with the Clippers, there's been an assumption, whether fair or not. that the clippers have been doing shady things and Kauai's been doing shady things. He's been getting money he shouldn't have got. And they got him through illicit means at the beginning. And as you said, every single time, they've been investigated and been exonerated, but that hasn't changed the perception that there's some shady stuff going on. And again, as Big Man said, when you just look at this was a very compelling case that Pablo laid out, right? It's all very fishy, all of it.

The numbers in it. The company is obviously a. a complete gong show. The whole thing is a mess. Like, it doesn't look good. But if you're coming back to the question of, like, does it look good for the Clippers? No, the entire Kauai Leonard era has been an absolute disaster for the Clippers. This was a team, though, supposed to be contending for titles. The thing that stands out about them over the past six years is Kauai injuries and epic meltdowns in the playoffs. Those are the things the Clippers are known for. And the package that they gave up to Oklahoma City.

Well, right, and that, right. And that they delivered a dynasty potentially to the Thunder. Those are the three takeaways from the Kauai Leonard era in L.A. So all of that is why this resonates the way it does. It's why everyone is immediately assuming that the Clippers are guilty. It's why there is this rush to decide how big the punishment is going to be and how much it's going to be. And as you have said repeatedly, and I will again say, I'm not sitting here saying I know the Clippers didn't do anything wrong. I'm not saying this whole thing is completely on the up and up. I'm not saying any of that.

I just personally, as of today, with what I have in front of me, don't see a world where this is going to end in a record-setting punishment and they're going to lose the All-Star game and multiple first-round picks and all this other stuff. And I will say this. Steve Ballmer in this interview, unless I'm mistaken, you can correct me if you think I'm wrong, he didn't refute anything that Pablo presented. No. And the reason I suspect he didn't refute it is because none of it is incriminating. Also because Popple has it documented, but yes. Well, I know, but I'm saying like, you know, he.

But there's not anything saying Steve Balmer actually did something wrong. It's a lot of stuff that looks bad, like to the average, like to the, I'm not saying looks bad like criminally, but like it's stuff that looks bad. It all looks bad. It looks bad. It's shady as hell. A $28 million notion. show thing is shady as hell.

But there's not a piece of paper that says, you owe Kauai Leonard $50 million of my money that goes through the company to this. And there's not a deposition that says that somebody says it to our knowledge. Right. As of, again, as of right now. And I think to your question, McMahon, about what will the league do? I suspect the league will investigate this as hard as they can. Now, the NBA has limitations in that, right?

They don't have subpoena power for outside the NBA. They can't necessarily get everything that you would want in front of you. But you're talking about, as you point out, this is a situation where Steve Ballmer is, if not the richest owner in the league, one of the top two or three richest owners in the league. And he's number one. he might. I mean, there's a couple super rich dudes. I just don't know if he starts or touches him, but it's not. Yeah. So either way, he's the richest owner in the league. He has the ability to do whatever he wants financially. A big part of why the rules were put in the last CBA was to limit someone like Steve Ballmer from just spending infinite money on a team, right?

So I don't think the league is going to sit back and go, hey, it's all good, like nothing to see here. Now, does that mean they're going to find something? Does that mean they're going to nail the clippers to the wall and cost them, you know, their draft. Hell, maybe they'll do an investigation and they'll find something else. Right. Yeah, I don't know. Right. But I think they're going, my guess is they will investigate this hard because the

the rest of the league is going to want them to. And if there is anything that's out there, they're going to want to find it. Because they, this is the thing they always go crazy about is trying to break the rules on the cap stuff. I know that there's a lot of, you know, I've seen all this reports of all the executives who are, you know, and team people who are like furious and everything. But I appreciated this one GM that I talked to yesterday. And he goes, having the clippers suffered enough with Kauai?

I mean, he was doing it with his tongue in his cheek. But it is unbelievable. Again, to go back to before, it's unbelievable how much of a disaster the Kauai era has been. like you all everybody always talks about well you got to do all this stuff to keep these star players right like this hasn't been worth it for the clippers it hasn't been a good outcome like they they traded all this stuff away they thought they were as a hypothetical i see people again i see again people say no they're going to void his contract again you know how i feel at this point would voiding his contract be yeah that's punishing balmer i'm just saying like i anyway so all right on to other

topic. More Hoop Collective podcast after this. Okay, so on to other business in the NBA, there was a free agent signing that happened in the last day or two. I don't sure when he actually signed it, they announced it on Thursday. Cam Thomas re-signed with the Nets. And it was for a player resigning, for like a top free agent, so to speak, resigning. it was as dry of a press release from the Nets as you can imagine

because this was a bit of a white flag situation. So Cam Thomas took his qualifying offer. The qualifying offer, as we've talked about before, is really sort of at this point a weapon being used by Cam Thomas because it ensures that he will be an unrestricted free agent next year and also installs a no trade clause. He has full control of what happens to him this year. But the dynamics of this decision were interesting

and the fact that he agreed to do this the first week of September with a month before training camp, I think, is what's relevant. Yeah, I mean, this thing, it's sort of, that's sort of true that it gives him some control. But he also, I think you could argue, loses a lot of control because we're talking about a Nets team, right, that just drafted,

an unprecedented five players in the first round of the NBA draft. Four of them are guards for ball handlers, right? I know Cam Thomas isn't much of a passer. It's much more of a score. But there's not, there's a lot less incentive for the Nets, I would say, to worry about Cam Thomas as part of their long-term plans. I would also say that I've known for probably a couple months that this was going to be the likely outcome here. I think we all did. there was not really any traction on any kind of a deal here. I think there's a pretty wide disparity on the two sides in terms of where they thought a deal should land. And, you know, I mean, I think if we're just being honest about it, Camp Thomas is a talented

scorer who has very little value in the league and around the league. And I think that's been evident in the fact that he's still on the nets after four years. And I think if there'd been interest in him in a real way over the past couple of years, there's a decent chance he'd have been traded. And I think it's evident in the fact that, like, the Josh Giddy situation, the Jonathan Gominguez situation, we'll see where those land in terms of whether there's an agreement on a deal. But there are at least teams interested in paying those guys. And their teams are at least somewhat interested in varying degrees of keeping those guys around.

And it never really felt like that was the case on either side with this Cam Thomas thing. And I think it sets up a pretty interesting situation to watch over the next eight to 10 months to see what kind of reaction there is to, you know, where Cam fits in the future in Brooklyn. And does somebody step up at some point and decide they want to make them part of their team? Yeah. I mean, I think a decent player comp for Cam Thomas in terms of a shoot first pass. occasionally a high scoring guard would be

Colin Sexton and you know Colin Sexton not a bad not a bad player but it's certainly not valued around the league I mean you look at

he's been traded twice well he's been traded twice and you look at this last trade that he was involved in straight up for for Yusef Nerkich gave up a pick that's right

he even gave a pick with him that's right incentivize to get Yusuf Nurkich, who I mean, is having a decent Eurobasket, but good God, that's pretty low value for sex. And again, I'm just bringing up a guy who's a similar comp, which the fact that Cam Thomas decided to go with the qualifying offer and take less money, at least two and a half million less than was on the table, to hold on to a no trade clause, is interesting. Okay, let me go over those numbers real quick.

Okay, so Shams reported this, and it's very interesting context because we don't often see details of negotiations come out. So Shams did a good job to get this information. And here's the thing. So his qualifying offer is $6 million. That's what he's taking. Shams said that he had a two-year, $30 million offer from the Nets where the second year was a team option.

So let's just assume for the sake of round numbers that that was 15 and 15, that it was $15 million. And that was what the Gary- That's the same thing. That's the same thing the Nets did with Dayron Sharp and Zaire Williams this summer, too. They had a pretty clear plan for how they wanted to approach the offseason. Yeah. So, yeah, Dayron Sharp also signed this week once they knew what Cam Thomas's number was.

That's why Dayron Sharp actually signed before Cam Thomas's deal was announced. but it makes me believe that Cam took that qualified offer even earlier, which is only relevant again because he's punting a week, a month before he could have. But forget about that. Let's just focus on the numbers. He had a two-year, $30 million contract offer of which $15 million was guaranteed. So at the end of the day, he had $15 million. He could have guaranteed himself at this contract signing. He takes $6 million. Now, one other thing that Shams says is Brooklyn offered $9.5 million, one year $9.5 million with incentives that would have put it to 11. I don't know what those incentives were, but let's just focus on the 9.5 right now.

But that would have come where he would have waived the no trade clause and he would basically become a very highly likely trade piece. So he could, so he's, the waving the no trade clause, retain the no trade clause, essentially was worth $3.5 million to him. He took $6 million versus $9.5. And he left $15 million on the table, which means that he must believe that his market will enable him on this next contract, whether it's two, three, four years, five years, I guess, theoretically if he stays there,

that he will make up the $9 million that he left on the table when he could have had a guarantee of that. So he's betting on himself and his market. He's bet on himself big time, but why is the no trade clause so important? It's not because he sees a bright future for himself in Brooklyn. That is. Yes, that is a fair question.

I assume, this is an assumption. It's because he wants to make sure if he gets traded, it is to a team that would value his bird rights. I would say the biggest reason you do that is because it keeps your bird rights at all, whereas if he gets traded, he doesn't have his bird rights. Yeah, I want to point that. I want to point that out. You may say to yourself, why does a player who gets a qualifying offer,

why does he get a no trade clause automatically? Here's why. Because the only way that you get a bird rights, which means a team that has your rights can go over the salary cap to sign you, is if the contract that you are on is at least three years long, or you have re-signed with your team that already had your bird rights. So if Cam Thomas had signed a one-year contract with the Bulls, they would not have his bird rights after one year.

So if he gets traded to the Bulls, he would lose his bird rights. And so because that's a gap in the CBA, they give players who are in this situation the right to veto a trade so that they don't go to a place where they lose their bird rights. Even though he's only on a one-year contract, because he is with the Nets and the Nets had his bird rights before, he could sign 10 one-year contracts. He would continue to get bird rights every time. But the bird rights are only valuable if he in the- the season on a team that has long-term plans for them. So the no trade clause, it's not a no-trade clause as much as it's a we get to say. Well, I will say this. It's a veto clause.

If it gets traded to a team that's way over the cap, and, you know, I mean, that's, again, that's part of the, that's part of the whole problem. One of the reasons that the restricted free agents like Josh Giddy, like Jonathan Kaminga, like Quentin Grimes, are in this situation. And by the way, this is only the fifth time since 2017 that a player has taken a qualifying offer. It is unusual to be in a situation where you take that because normally if a team still wants you, there's something on the table. And we'll remember that he turned down $15 million. We'll see what he gets over the next few years.

Maybe he bets on himself and wins. And remember, because we talked about this the other day, for him to make that difference back, he's got to make $24 million next year. Well, he doesn't have to make it back in one year. Well, I mean, but if you look at over the two years, like, that's how the money averages out. Like, you know, if he, you know, we'll see if he does. Yeah. So he does.

Yeah, so he's, this is somewhat rare that this would happen. But the reason that these guys are all restricted and are stuck, the guy, are, this year is because there's no money in the market. And in fact, in this case, the only team that had cap space out there for most of the summer was the Nets. And he didn't even have a chance to go sign an offer sheet with somebody because the team that could have given out the offer sheet was his own team. That flips next year. Where right now we're looking at 10 plus teams with significant cap space. So the chances of him getting someone's cap space next year are increased, which again would lead you to believe he took. He would take the extra three and a half million now.

because next year bird rights wouldn't be as important because he would potentially have a bunch of options. They're also all pretty flawed players and I'm not sure that the market will be that much more robust. Right. But if you're trying to, if you're trying to justify taking the qualifying offer and becoming a free agent again in 2026, you're doing it because you believe that there's a lot of teams out there with money. You wouldn't do it like last year. If you were last year, if you were looking ahead to this summer, you're like, boy, there's only a couple of teams with. money. It's not a time to take the qualifying offer. Like last year, Cam Thomas probably takes more money, whether it's the nine and a half or the 15. This year, there's some rationale. There's some rationale. Look, if you believe in yourself, you can say, I'm going to go prove myself and there's going to be. Yeah, that's what I think. I think the overriding thing with

Cam Thomas is he has supreme confidence in himself. And I think that has carried. through these negotiations and I think it's and I think it's carried through the first four years of his career and sort of the way he's gone about his business and again it's why I think it sets up like the Nets obviously are not a very sexy team there's not a lot of interesting stuff going on with them right now they obviously fell short in the draft lottery they were hoping to get Cooper flagger Dylan Harper they end up with the eighth pick in the draft they gave Gaguer Demen they draft these other guys but there's not a lot of reason for the Nets in my opinion to be invested in Camp Thomas this year now. And that is going to be an interesting thing to monitor and see how that

plays out over the next six, eight months and what that looks like. Because to me, if I were them, I'd be invested in even the contracts they were offering, none of those which are all in line with what we've been hearing for a while and why it was unlikely there was ever going to be a deal. none of those deals indicate the Nets have a belief in him being part of their group long term. And they just drafted all these young guys who they might as well see what they have. So, you know, it's going to be, it's going to be an interesting thing for Jodie Fernandez to manage this season. All right. So in addition to that, some news that we had since, well, we last spoke, Shams also reported this. The yet more changes to the All-Star game. I'm really trying not to

you make editorial comment on this. I just, I enjoyed the timing of this news. The timing of it was great, I thought. Well, just hours after. Oh, stuff. I don't know. I think there was a meeting of the competition committee on Wednesday that this was presented at.

So, all right. So now there's going to be three teams, two teams of American players and one team of international players. How do we know there's going to be exactly eight international players, by the way? Going to be a Ryder Cup format, Brian. Riter Cup format. We got to be out the same. I don't know what that means. We've got to be in the bunkers sitting some wedges. Listen, number one, I am tired of hearing all the whining about how boring an All-Star weekend is because nobody even knows what the hell like NFL Pro Bowl weekend. What, like, what do they do? I think it's like hay stands and cornhole. Like, nobody gives a crap. Okay, so whatever.

this is like the NBA has been so much energy and effort and in trying to make this game or games or pickup runs or shirts versus skins or rider cup interesting like dude it's an exhibition and I don't give a crap I'm going to be on a beach somewhere I will give them credit for this they at least of when it's US versus the world I'm like hold on like yes there are great players internationally obviously look at the MVP stuff every year you see that. But there's not 12 deserving international All-Stars, at least at the expense of the American. So they at least figured that part out. And then I don't know how they're going to figure out the shirts versus skins and all that kind of crap. They're going to play shirts versus skins?

I think so. I mean, who knows what the hell they're doing? Okay. You just confuse me there. Don't say that if you don't mean it. Because here's a problem. When you say like an All-Star concept, I can't tell what's. You can't rule it out.

It's facetious or not. They're not really playing shirts versus scans. I think they're going to all have those reversible jerseys like you get for practice jerseys. I'm just going to say that this year there were six international all-stars. I guess if you want to count Carl Towns, even though he's born and raised New Jersey, he does play for the Dominican national team. So I guess you could count him.

But like, how are you going to do that? Are you going to manipulate that? That's my first question. but okay, I'll wait until they officially announced it to pass judgment on that. But that's my question on that. They're going to play round robin. So you have three teams.

They each will play each other, I guess. I don't, you know, what happens if the... Are they still scoring by twos and threes, or is it like, because the worst pickup game is when they go ones and twos. It's like, that's crap. Well, you might as well do that in the NBA All-Star game because every shot's a three-pointer anyway.

They would all shoot twos. So you might as well just do that. So there's a four team symbol. Oh, no, that's last year. Sorry. Three teams. And they're going to play each other in 12-minute quarter games. In other words, I think one 12-minute quarter.

But I don't know. I don't know, man. This is a bunch of silliness. Well, again, this is the- I'm trying not to be a jerk. I'm trying to just to say what's going on. We don't have to be a jerk about it. But let's just call a,

spade a spade. The NBA has repeatedly tried to fix the All-Star game. The problem is it can't be fixed. It should, it's fine. Just have it be an exhibition game. Have people go out there and dunk the ball and make threes. Kids will enjoy watching the game. Stop acting like the most important thing in the history of humankind is to have the All-Star game be played like Game 7 of the NBA Finals. It's not going to be game. Get off Twitter. Get off Twitter during the All-Star game. It's like, stop scrolling your freaking Twitter feed and overreacting to people whine. I remember when baseball had a tie in the All-Star game and everybody decided that was the worst thing that ever happened in the history of humankind.

The Pro Bowl is now literally some kind of obstacle course thing or something. They don't even play a game. Hockey has had 7,000 versions of the All-Star game. I have no idea what they do for the Pro Bowl. I don't care. You don't hear NFL fans crying about it. Let me just say nobody cares. It's different because the Pro Bowl is at the end of the season and everybody's had their football.

It's different. It's different because it's football and people think there's a better chance of guys get hurt playing in the Pro Bowl. So they don't really care if guys are in the Pro Bowl and not playing. If they played the Pro Bowl in a by week in the middle of the season, they'd be saying the same thing. They're like, oh yeah, who cares? We're not going to have guys get hurt in this game. So the All-Star game stinks as a product for me. I don't want to watch it.

It's boring to watch. But I also don't care, and I don't think it's an existential crisis that the game is born. But the NBA has been over backwards to make it an existential crisis by Adam Silver every year getting up and saying, we've got this new plan to fix the All-Star game. And then two years ago, to Indianapolis, he said, oh, we got it fixed. We had a good chat with the fellas. everybody's on board. We're going to have to talk to Larry Bird and everybody's going to compete.

And then they went out there. It was an even worse game. And when he walked out of the building, it looked like his dog had died in front of him. Like, at the end of the day, like, we got LeBron showing up two hours before the game. Well, last year, he shut up and he didn't play. That's right. So, like, again, like, who cares? I just don't care about any of it.

It's a game for. All right, well, let's stop talking about then. Who has the TV rights? NBC has it as part of the new deal. Awesome. So not our problem. Well, it hasn't been our problem. TNTs.

I know. That's not been our problem for a long time. All right. I'm sure next year there'll be a new format. Before we go, Bontem's was all interested in talking about this new LeBron commercial. And listen, I just, I had to be informed why it was such a thing. Well, hold on. I've been on, as we've talked about on the pod, some solo dad duty during the day because

Kay Bond went back to work last week. And so I've been out of the loop on some of these things. And then this week, I saw our guy Jay E. Skeets did the thing about it on either on no dunks on their social or on their pod. I saw this other conversation pop up about, well, there's this Forever King, LeBron commercial. There's all this past tense stuff. It's just setting up for the end of his career.

Is this going to be his farewell season? What's going on? So I just asked you, we were talking on the phone or I was like, what's the deal with this LeBron commercial? I don't know what's going on with them. So you know what? The commercial accomplished its goal. Has people talking about LeBron?

I agree. Oh, my God. What is what I mean? Hold on. But we have the official LeBron biographer sitting here. I just want to know what he thought of it. I don't know about official. I think very unofficial.

I think that's been established. The chronicle. The unauthorized. The unauthorized. In this commercial, if you haven't seen it, it's in black and white, and it is, the entire theme is Forever King. And I don't know what all the words are, but it talks about how LeBron's been really great for a long time.

And he's wearing a crown in the commercial. It's just sort of a slow, you know, the camera's moving around his head. and some people have interpreted it as like the beginning of his retirement announcement. As far as I know, and I am certainly not claiming to know it all, this is a marketing campaign for his LeBron 23 shoe. This is his 23rd season. He's worn 23 the majority of his career. He has a new shoe out. And they're putting more marketing behind this shoe than they have in recent years.

I'm sure there's a reason why. the people in the shoe business can do that. I'm not going to say that. He is making a trip to China for the first time since the pandemic. As far as I know, he hasn't been to China since he was there with the Lakers when they had the Daryl Morey tweet. Yes. And he was making annual pilgrimages for decades over there. He would go over there every year.

and then after COVID, no NBA players went for years. Even when COVID was quote unquote over, China was pretty much closed and those things. Over the last couple of years, players have started going back and now LeBron is going back. So as far as I know, which the shoe, the LeBron 23 shoe was unveiled this week in conjunction with the release of this Forever King marketing campaign, as far as I know, it's a marketing campaign. And he's going to China. He's going to be in a couple of cities in China. They're branding that as a 20th anniversary of his first trip to China when he was with Nike.

I guess he went in 2005. He couldn't go in 2004 because he signed in 2003. He couldn't go in 2004 because he was playing the Olympics. So he went for the first time in 2005. And then pretty much every year after that, maybe not in some Olympic years, but almost every year after that. And then he didn't after COVID. So now he's going back.

He got new shoes. It's a marketing campaign, Forever King. There's a very fancy gold, like signage that they did with it. And, you know, frankly, Nike has done less of this in recent years anecdotally. So the fact they're doing this is a good sign. Now, as far as LeBron's future, I know there's a lot of speculation. based on my conversations, I honestly think they don't know. He honest, as far as I know, I think he's honestly going year to year.

Could this be his last year? Yes. Will it be his last year? I don't know. Does he know right now? Maybe. But my interpretation is that that has not been established. He will see where he's at at the end of the year.

It is true that for the first time in his 23-year careers, career, he is in fact on the last year of a contract. Never before has he not had at least a player option for the next year. And he will be an un, he's not even allowed to extend his contract. So he will absolutely, when we get to the end of the season, have the opportunity to say thank you, or see you later, re-sign with the Lakers, or go somewhere else, or go play somewhere else in the world. And the other thing that is true is for the first time in his career, probably life, he is not the centerpiece and what everything revolves around on his team. So, you know, like even if, like, does he want to play next year?

I don't know. If he does want to play next year, will it be with the Lakers? Who knows? Has he dropped any hints, Wendy, in the group chat from your high school team? No, here's the copy. the copy. They called him the chosen one. Called. He carried the weight on every ex. He carried the weight of every expectation on his shoulders, but he never broke.

We were all witnesses. Every rival was defeated. I'm not sure that's 100% true, but mostly true. Every idol was. Who didn't he beat? I mean, I don't know. He didn't play Kobe in the finals or something? I have you. I guess I'm sure But he won regular season games. Whatever. Let's not get bogged down in some antics. It's hero worship.

Every idol was destroyed. I don't think he idolized any of his peer players. So I'm going to reject that. I'm not sure. You know, whatever. They're just, again, they're writing marketing. That's a silly line. Yeah.

I mean, okay. It sounds cool. He took the crown and kept it. I think that's a fair statement. Behold the greatness. He is the forever king. Very humble. I like this.

Cool. I mean, it's fine. And it's a cool logo. It's like a, it looks like 24-carat gold logo. People say that the shoes are cool. I don't, I learned long ago that I cannot be trusted to evaluate that. I actually have not seen the shoes. I believe they literally just publicize them.

And I'm sure there's many, many color ways, but the color way that I saw was sort of golden. going with the theme of the Forever King. But anyway, I just think from my perspective, this is just a marketing campaign for his new shoe and his overall brand. These are good-looking shoes, I must admit, and they are like a- Are they fire?

Yeah, as far as that. Fire or not fire. I think they're pretty fire. I'll be honest with you. And they- The official Who Collective Declaration brought their shoes. To be clear,

To be clear, I do not wear player shoes. I wear Jordans because he's long retired. I don't wear player shoes. But I could definitely see my boys wanting a pair of these. These are some nice kicks. Yeah, and they're much, you know, again, I am not Nick DePaula, our former colleague who does all this stuff. He is the shoe guy.

These shoes are different than they used to be. He used to have clodhoppers, which people... Yeah, I was going to say, these are. look right. Yeah. I can't believe you just said that. These are good looking shoes. I ain't a lie. No, I'm not. That's not. I'm laughing at the use of clodhoppers. We just got transported back to the 1970s. Man, I'll never forget. There was...

Get me some clawed hoppers over here. There was this one year in Miami, and I don't know if it was the LeBron 8 or 9 or 10 or whatever, but he was having trouble with the shoe. He was just having trouble with it. And... They're a cool look at shoes. It's interesting. There's no swoosh on him. They get spousions. And longer, more and more, he was sort of like wearing a different version, like an older version of his shoe. And there was one night.

So he's having trouble with these shoes. And he would go back to him or whatever. So I think this is maybe like 2013 or 2012, 13 or 13, 14. And one night he was playing in Miami. I remember it. and he wiped out. He was running, he was going in transition, because remember the heat, you know,

just always flying death machine. And he's going in transition, and he just, the shoe kind of blew out, and he left a skid mark on the floor that was two feet long. To this day, I've never seen a player leave that kind of, it looked like,

somebody had peeled rubber on the court. So, you know, when you have 23 different versions of your shoe, not all of them are going to be hits. Well, you know, Luca, the Luca threes, he barely ever wore those. My son wears Lucas. My son. They've got their, they're to the fours now. Luca's been wearing the four.

I think these were twos. I think these, I don't know. Don't quote me. The Luca threes, that's when he tweaked his knee and played like that whole finals run almost on a sore knee and he went right back because they debuted him at the beginning the playoffs he went right back to actually do the Luca ones and kind of stayed with those so for about a you know for a little while there luca was uh oh and actually they fast forward to the fours after got traded to the Lakers there's pretty good chance for some publicity at that point uh well

anyway i think i found this uh this skid mark oh yeah i found a during your days as a magic-esque type of passer that you were telling us about on your Instagram, which is a must follow these days? No, it was Instagram or was it threads? Whatever. I saw it on Instagram. What kind of kicks did you wear back then? When I was in eighth grade.

I got a pair of Reebok pumps, man. Ooh, who, who, who. I remember the pumps. Jackson. I mean this sincerely. I'm sending you a picture of a skid mark so you can drop with you.

Put that in the proper context, please. Here, I'm going to put it in the chat so you can, I want you guys. Does Jackson know what the pumps are? That's the better question. Everybody is for the boys. They've kind of come back a little bit. I mean, not.

Dude, Jackson is 12 years old. So, Dee Brown made sure everybody would always know what the pumps are. Jackson's basketball life started with the Syracuse National Championship. Do you remember, though, do you remember the Nike pumps where there was like an actual pump?

You had to like, and then the real I got it right where you could just pump up the little basketball. Yeah. Wendy, what did those pumps do for your hops? Nothing. But I, the D. Brown slam dunk contest where he wore the all black pumps with the orange basketball pump in the tongue.

I thought were the coolest shoes ever. You couldn't find him. You couldn't have, we didn't have stock X. or eBay. So I had to get like a white pair, but I did every buck pumps, and I stunk.

But I did like to throw past. You apparently were like, I mean, you were diamond folks up or no look here, no look there. I liked to pass. I liked, somebody at, you know, I get every Wednesday I do Q&A on threads and somebody asked me

who my favorite players were to watch highlights of. And I said magic, because I loved and I loved the magic passes. I'm right there with you. Hakeem Elijah on because he would go into the post and he wouldn't do it every game, but like if you saw the highlight packages

of him putting guys in spin cycles in the post, like... Dave Bromson still has nightmares. Truly unique. No one's ever been able to do stuff like that. Like truly, I mean, like just like Kareem, no one's ever been able to shoot the skyhook. No one's been able to put guys in blenders.

You know, people, freak out, you know, ankle breaking. You know, this was ankle breaking in the post. Like that's... Yeah, with the pivot, pivot and pump fake. And then one of my favorite, of my career covering the NBA, which is also going into its 23rd season. What a coincidence.

Yeah. I covered a few games a year before. I don't know if I should count it or not. I covered a couple games the year before. But anyway, I don't think I liked watching a player more in my career than I liked watching Gilbert Arena's play. I loved watching Gilbert Arena's play. He was ahead of his time.

He was taking 30 footers. Imagine Gilbert. If you could transport Gilbert into like today's game. So Wendy was saying on his famous social media feed. I know, but just in general, like, just to be crazy to watch. I used to want to be the guy who threw the flashy pass. I didn't care about scoring. I still am.

You like to score too, buddy. no it's like McMinneman is the one who likes to score Mac 10 Mac 10 is the Cam Thomas of pickup players yeah he's a straight gunner yeah good shooter though I'll give him that he can shoot it good shooter they can shoot it it's a big weekend for Jackson Dave McMendman with Carmelow going into the Hall of Fame I'm going in twice that's right

before we go we want to congratulate our colleague Adrian Wojjianarski, who is going in to the Hall of Fame this weekend, winner of the Kurt Gowdy Award, legend. Didn't have to wait the five years or whatever it is, three years now, Bontas. How about that? He did not. Immediate admission. Spears is still working, he's in there.

They're actually, LeBron and Chris Paul are going in this weekend as part of the Redeemed team, and they will be the first active players who are in the Hall of fame. I don't really like that designation. It happens with coaches all the time. That's true. I think is weird, but whatever. So yeah, but yeah, so Woj is going in and congratulations to him. I look forward to anybody, you know, razzing him and heckling him. I think the only question is, can he be a two-time inductee? Oh, like, will the ESPN staff get inductee? later and he can be a part of that. No, no, no.

I was thinking it's the same Bonaventure GM. Oh. You know, if they get that thing. The future is wide open. Yeah. It's Tom Petty once saying. He has not retired.

He has just launched new career. All right. Well, I hope everybody enjoys that weekend. I hope you enjoyed that weekend. Thank you for watching and listening to the Hoop Collective. Thank you to Jackson. Thank you to Ramona, who joined us earlier.

Thank you to Bon Temson McMahon. And we'll talk to you. we'll see next week. Adios amigos.