Clippers’ laziness led to 2015 hand slap. Their recklessness brought NBA’s ire | Opinion

Let me get this right: The Los Angeles Clippers got busted by the NBA for offering improper benefits to a player it was trying to sign, apologized and promised not to do it again, and then … did?

These folks aren’t just shady, they’re reckless. Or lazy. Or stupid. Or some combination of the three. That alone makes them deserving of all those harsh penalties the NBA dropped on them for setting up side hustles between Kawhi Leonard and four companies.

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“The Clippers were especially aware of the CBA’s circumvention rules in this area because the NBA had previously found that the team violated them,” Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, the law firm that investigated the Clippers for the NBA, said in its report, released Wednesday, Sept. 2.

Clippers had similar deal for DeAndre Jordan

For those who have forgotten, that was in 2015. The NBA found the Clippers arranged an endorsement deal with a sponsor for DeAndre Jordan during his free agency recruitment, and the Clippers were fined $250,000.

And it gets better! At the time, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said “any circumvention was inadvertent.”

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“In our effort to support our players in every way possible,” Ballmer said in 2015, “we as an organization must be diligent in complying with the CBA.”

Five forfeited first-round draft picks and more than $30 million in fines later, here we are again. The Clippers running the same scam and shocked to wind up with the same outcome.

“I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”

For some, cheating part of the game

It would be nice if sports teams, along with Fortune 500 companies and politicians, operated above board, any wrongdoings stemming from ignorance rather than intent. That, however, is woefully naïve.

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Publish date : 2026-09-03 22:09:00

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