By dropping a sledgehammer, Adam Silver squares off against NBA’s richest owner

Adam Silver didn’t just drop the hammer on the Los Angeles Clippers. He busted out the sledgehammer and called in the wrecking ball for good measure.

Make no mistake about it, the commissioner sent a message on Wednesday. Not just to the Clippers. He cc’d the entire NBA and anyone who dared to think about the words, “cap circumvention.”

Advertisement

Among the league’s punishments to the Clippers after an investigation found that they broke league rules in order to pay Kawhi Leonard under the table: a $30 million fine; the loss of five first-round picks beginning in 2029; one-year suspensions for owner Steve Ballmer and top business executive Gillian Zucker; and a six-month suspension for top basketball executive Lawrence Frank. The team will also be subject to a compliance and monitoring program for the next five years. 

For his part in the scheme, Leonard will be fined $700,000 and his former representative, Dennis Robertson, will be banned from league business activities for five years. 

Leonard and Robertson will be fine. This was all about punishing Ballmer, the richest owner in sports, and hitting him where it hurts. 

Here are my five takeaways in the aftermath of Wednesday’s news.

1. Steve Ballmer has two strikes. Next one, he will be out.

Don’t forget, this isn’t the first time Ballmer has been punished for cap circumvention. In 2015, the NBA fined the Clippers $250,000 for breaking league rules by offering an impermissible endorsement deal for DeAndre Jordan in free agency. Obviously, Ballmer didn’t learn his lesson.

Advertisement

Silver and his lawyers had to have known that any monetary punishment wasn’t going to change Ballmer’s ways. Indeed, the former Microsoft mogul won’t lose a minute of sleep over the monetary hit. A $30 million fine for someone worth $150 billion (Forbes estimates $152.7 billion, to be exact) is the equivalent of a $200 fine for someone worth $1 million. The money was never going to be the deterrent in something like this. 

Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has been suspended for one year. (AP Photo/Jayne Kamin-Oncea)

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Yes, losing the five first-round picks will…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/by-dropping-a-sledgehammer-adam-silver-squares-off-against-nbas-richest-owner-005241941.html

Author : Tom Haberstroh

Publish date : 2026-09-03 00:52:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.