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.
"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."
"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.
From the second humans began competing against one another, they started looking for an edge. What began with efficiencies in mechanics and training and progressed to equipment hacks eventually – inevitably? – led to outright cheating. What’s the old saying? “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”
But the Clippers, like so many others, were done in by their hubris. They thought they were being clever when they were the opposite. Their cover story was flimsier than cooked pasta, faking "introduction" emails to make it look as if they were responding to a request when they were really initiating it. They left paper trails, with details of the schemes included in emails and texts.
And now they’re trying to claim they’re the wronged party?
"We vehemently reject the NBA's findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence," the Clippers said in response to the NBA's punishment. "What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure its fairness and accuracy.
"For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence," the statement added. "We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process."
Good luck with that.
Clippers not first to play themselves
The Clippers are hardly the first people to be bad at crime. Remember Deflategate? One of the folks involved in that had nicknamed himself "The Deflator." The ringleader of Michigan’s sign-stealing caper, Connor Stalions, used his own name to buy tickets to opponents' games. New York Jets wide receiver Jeremy Kerley blamed his four-game suspension for PEDs on "ghosts."
Mob bosses, these folks are not.
Ballmer and two of his executives are in imposed timeouts lasting between six months and a year. If they don't use that time off to realize the error of their ways, at least come up with a better scheme.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Clippers' laziness led to 2015 hand slap. Their recklessness brought NBA's ire | Opinion
