Tag: nytimes.com

By the time Kawhi Leonard and his uncle, Dennis Robertson, asked for financial benefits outside the NBA’s salary cap during his free agency in 2019, the LA Clippers were familiar with the script. In 2015, the Clippers, in an attempt to keep center DeAndre Jordan — one of that summer’s top free agents — presented…

Caught. Nabbed. Busted. The LA Clippers spent the last year insisting they had nothing to fear from an NBA investigation into cap circumvention and that everything would be fine. Narrator voice: Everything was not fine. A half-decade-old scheme to funnel extra money to Kawhi Leonard has come to light, with the help of an investigative…

College football season is here, and we’ve already had a big surprise. Bill Belichick’s North Carolina Tar Heels, a bit of a laughingstock last season, opened their campaign with a Week 0 win over TCU, which was an 8.5-point favorite. They showed a stingy defense in doing so and played a much cleaner game than…

If any team knows how the LA Clippers feel after the NBA dropped the hammer for salary-cap circumvention, it is the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Timberwolves were embroiled in a similar scandal 27 years ago, when a legal dispute between two agents brought to light an under-the-table agreement Minnesota made with veteran forward Joe Smith. After…

If the Player Empowerment Era of the NBA is, by most accounts, at an end, Adam Silver went in the other direction Wednesday. He looked upon the richest owner in his league by a factor of 3 or 4x, depending on whose financial listings you believe, and threw the book at him and his team.…

The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Hit a lucky shot today. Inside:  🔨 Ouch, Clippers 🫠 CFB’s watered-down Week 1 🫩 More bad news for Good Good Discipline: The Clippers get walloped Exactly one year ago,…

In less than a year, Mark Cuban went from declaring himself on “Team Ballmer” to congratulating journalist Pablo Torre. Torre spent the last year investigating the LA Clippers for salary-cap circumvention, and on Wednesday, the NBA handed the franchise and owner Steve Ballmer the largest punishment in league history for funneling millions of dollars to…

Earlier this week, part one of my Knicks mailbag was published, centering around the key players on the roster and what’s next for New York as it pertains to extensions. Here in part two, the focus is on the start of the year, young players on the roster, filling a roster spot and more. Let’s…

Steve Ballmer sat there only the one time. Part of Ballmer’s $2 billion Intuit Dome is a section — you know this — called “The Wall,” which is supposed to be an intimidating optical illusion for opponents looking up behind one of the baskets during free throws. What they think they see is a wall…

Uncle Dennis never called back. Never defended himself. Never even bothered to deny any of the accusations that would eventually lead to Wednesday’s stunning NBA ruling against the LA Clippers in this landmark salary cap circumvention case. It was late winter 2019, some six months after Kawhi Leonard chose to sign with the Clippers and…