NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league needs solid evidence before punishing the Clippers over the Kawhi Leonard payment controversy.
The NBA will have to prove wrongdoing in its investigation of the Los Angeles Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer regarding potential deals worth up to $48 million between Kawhi Leonard and former team sponsor Aspiration.
“The burden is on the league if we’re going to discipline a team, an owner, a player or any constituent members of the league,” Silver said Wednesday during his news conference after the NBA’s board of governors meetings in Manhattan.
He emphasized that fairness requires the accuser to bear responsibility for proving allegations.
Silver made it clear he won’t act on appearances alone.
“I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety,” he told reporters. “The goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety.”
The commissioner stressed the importance of thorough investigation before jumping to conclusions.
“In a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false,” Silver noted. “I’d want anybody else in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in now, or Kawhi Leonard for that matter, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me.”
The NBA has already launched its investigation into whether the Clippers broke league rules after Leonard reportedly accepted a $28 million endorsement for a “no-show job” from Aspiration, a now-bankrupt company that Ballmer had invested in.
This all blew up last week when someone claiming to be a former Aspiration employee told podcaster Pablo Torre that the payment to Leonard “was to circumvent the salary cap.”
According to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, a New York law firm is handling the investigation, but there’s no deadline for when they’ll finish.
Silver reminded everyone Wednesday that he has “very broad powers in these situations,” though it remains unclear whether the Clippers need to prove their innocence or if the NBA must prove they broke the rules.
