Steve Ballmer could file a lawsuit against NBA. Image via: Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Leonard himself was fined $700,000. Team president Gillian Zucker lost a year of pay, and basketball operations chief Lawrence Frank drew a six-month suspension. Further, Ballmer was suspended for a full year from all league and team activity.
Ballmer had already gone after Aspiration once before, back when the failed company claimed it owed the Clippers $30 million. NBA insider Chris Mannix reported on Open Floor that people close to the Clippers expect the fallout to end in lawsuits against Torre himself.
“We are exploring every legal remedy to address this gross injustice,” Kelley wrote. “We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a biased investigation,” the team said, adding that what the league said privately didn’t match what it announced publicly. Silver pushed back just as firmly, calling the league’s compensation system “a fundamental component of the basketball competition” that the NBA runs for teams, players and fans alike. One person warned him directly, according to Mannix: “You’re calling Steve Ballmer a liar?
The Clippers used similarly sharp language in their own statement. Torre may not walk away clean either. You better be careful.”
Pablo Torre says none of that was inevitable. “Steve Ballmer was fundamentally uninterested in settling,” Torre said. The league wanted a quieter resolution, according to Torre, and got a fight instead.
A Steve Ballmer lawsuit against the NBA is a real possibility, and it comes at the worst possible moment for the league. Steve Ballmer and the Clippers still haven’t decided how to respond to the harshest punishment in NBA history, and a restraining order request is reportedly one option sitting on the table. The fallout traces back to Pablo Torre, the Pulitzer-winning journalist whose podcast reporting exposed a hidden payment scheme tied to Kawhi Leonard. What began as a single explosive episode has snowballed into fines, suspensions, a stalled trade, and now the threat of Ballmer suing the very league that punished him. On his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, he explained that Ballmer had a chance to settle and chose not to.