In a tweet that somehow seemed to surprise the NBA community, Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban showed his support for LA Clippers’ boss Steve Ballmer. Billionaire team owners supporting other billionaire team owners isn’t exactly an unheard-of concept. But Cuban presented what he believes to be very compelling arguments about why there was no salary cap circumvention to begin with.
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Cuban believes, Aspiration, the now-bankrupt company that Ballmer had invested millions in, had taken liberties with the investors’ money. “The better the team does, the more value the sponsorship has. It actually makes perfect sense that if they stole money from investors and want the clippers to succeed, why not give stolen money to help keep their best player?” he had tweeted.
Cuban had also accused Pablo Torre of not doing his due diligence in uncovering the truth behind how the scam was pulled. Earlier today, the billionaire joined Torre on his podcast, where the two discussed the case and the ongoing investigation.
“The reason I am on team Ballmer is because when I went back and I looked, the deal was in 2021, before their arena opened. Right when Kawhi signed the new contract and its $300 million. When you get a deal of that size with a new category sponsor, the NBA has to approve it,” Cuban said, noting that there was no way that the league hadn’t looked into this.
Cuban, however, claims that this wasn’t even the overwhelming part of his argument. “Then they defaulted on that deal. They stopped doing it and Ballmer made an announcement at some point in time, saying that the deal was not moving forward and this was several years ago. But that wasn’t really the trigger for team Ballmer.”
He claims that the trigger for Ballmer was in January 2024 it was either the SEC or the CFTC revealed that they were under investigation. Cuban guarantees that the moment Aspiration came under investigation by the authorities, the NBA began focusing their resources to seriously look into them.
“Ballmer, if he did something illicit and under the table, tried to work around the salary cap, then he’s got to be s******* bricks. Because at that point in time, he’s the dumbest human being on the planet because he trusted these scammers to do something he knew was against NBA rules,” Cuban added, noting that he simply doesn’t see that happening.
Cuban asserts that the NBA would have found them out easily and “in order for this to work, in my opinion, he has to trust that whole company … he trusted them enough to give them an investment at some level but I don’t see how he trusts that company to keep probably his darkest secret as an NBA owner so it won’t get out,” Cuban asserted.
The Mavericks owner certainly does present an arguable point. Of course, it might even seen arguable at this point, let the lawyers and the NBA be the judge of that. As far as Leonard and Ballmer as concerned though, regardless of whatever verdict the NBA comes up with, this is going to be a rough few weeks, at the very least.
