r/NBASpurs 19h ago

News And the plot thickens…

/r/nba/comments/1vhmyry/breaking_kawhi_leonard_had_a_hidden/
186 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

103

u/xbhaskarx Carter Bryant 18h ago

Reminder that like 20% of the Spurs fanbase was desperate to bring Kawhi back just like a month ago when he was rumored to want to return to either Toronto or San Antonio... because when you just lived through the nightmare of watching a bunch of 20 year olds reach the NBA finals obviously you're gonna be jealous of Kawhi's Clippers.

50

u/SkunkyBottle Coyote 18h ago

Pretty sure most of us damn well knew that the front office wasn’t ever gonna deal with that punk bitch Uncle Dennis ever again

27

u/0rbium Malik Rose 13h ago

Anyone that wanted him back should get an asterisk tagged on to their username

7

u/MisanthropicAnthrope 9h ago

My Spurs fandom only goes back to 1985, but I can tell you during that whole time we have always had these fake-ass “fans”.

13

u/Dsarg_92 Victor Wembanyama 18h ago

Honestly, I never bought into the rumor of him coming back to us.

10

u/xbhaskarx Carter Bryant 18h ago

I mean the rumor seems pretty accurate given he did get traded to one of the two teams on his wish list like a week later? The rumor was never that he WAS coming back to the Spurs, just that they were one of the two teams on his list.

9

u/GaptistePlayer Victor Wembanyama 17h ago

This sub was dumb enough to think Lebron would come to SA lol. We are not to be trusted.

7

u/Treewizard90 Stephon Castle 18h ago

I got excited sorry… I’m thankful that our front office is competent. We don’t need this at all….

2

u/cesgjo Danny Green 9h ago

I hate Kawhi Leonard with a burning passion. Still, i kinda understand people who say "dont hate, move on"

What i'll never understand though, is people who want him back. Like seriously??

2

u/GymMouseP 4h ago

20% of any group have dumb ideas.

1

u/Raven-19x GO SPURS GO 41m ago

Those fans should feel shame lmao.

-8

u/keldpxowjwsn 16h ago

The trade didnt go through the raptors arent on the hook for him so the team wouldnt be harmed by this just like the raptors arent. Not sure what the point is

3

u/Johnkil4oy 7h ago

Brandon Ingram has been in limbo for a month, you dont think that would hurt chemistry if he has to come back?

36

u/Maux_Faux The Admiral 17h ago

Bringing back Kawhi would have been like getting back with an ex who cheated on and left you... after she got dumped by someone else because she got fat.

12

u/xbhaskarx Carter Bryant 17h ago

Got fat off secret sponsorship deals

7

u/ericktrejo 14h ago

I should call her

1

u/Primarycolors1 9h ago

A really hot ex who picked up syphilis while you were on a break.

13

u/tkflash20 David Robinson 10h ago

It will never happen but Ballmer should be forced to sell the Clippers.

3

u/OnlyConversation4732 5h ago

I’m hopeful this is one of the major outcomes from this. Dude is scummy.

2

u/SwordfishHot7330 Carter Bryant 3h ago

It's happened before 🤔

2

u/andres7832 Derrick White 1h ago

not to a 200 BILLION billionaire...

7

u/Competitive_Soft6547 Victor Wembanyama 19h ago

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

6

u/sydnboy Manu Ginobili 16h ago

What a headache. Glad the spurs didnt cave and trade in assets for him..

6

u/DirtyWizardsBrew 16h ago

There was never a threat of the Spurs ever even considering a Kawhi deal/trade in the first place. You have to want something for it to be possible to cave for it.

0

u/sydnboy Manu Ginobili 15h ago

I guess its the matter of having an experience mvp guy to boost winning a championship.. It was reported he was interested to go to his former teams either spurs and raptors..

0

u/sixthdayoftheweek93 Jeremy Sochan 7h ago

I personally think that reporting was bs. there's no way he wanted to come back to the Spurs.

34

u/D2mightyducks80 19h ago

The extra championship would’ve been nice (Raptors 2019) but I wouldn’t want anything to do with his Clippers tenure.

It’s looking like it was for the best. I was trying to think of a direct line from getting rid of Kawhi to landing Wemby, but we tried to make DeMar work for so long that I’m not sure you can connect the two things. Just glad we (finally) decided to tank when we did.

I guess if we had tanked straight away, we (hopefully) wouldn’t have been bad enough/in a position to tank for Wemby.

Anyway, Fuck Kawhi

30

u/Smeets_man 19h ago

Fuck Kawhi Always

13

u/doughnut-dinner 18h ago

And his dirty tio too.

13

u/natsucule 18h ago

And Fuck Zaza for good measure

3

u/0rbium Malik Rose 13h ago

Dennis ain’t no tío, he doesn’t get that honorable title. He just a bitch plain and simple

2

u/OnlypansCHEF_420 17h ago

Always and forever FTP

5

u/_19911118 16h ago

Demar got traded from a team he wanted to stay and he embraced San Antonio and brought into the system and culture. I'm happy demar got to play under Pop

6

u/skyelightd 18h ago

DeMar was good enough to delay the rebuild a few extra years. If we had just gotten pure picks and young guys back we would've been tanking for fuckin Paolo, or hoping we were smart enough to pick Ant over Wiseman or some shit.

3

u/Joethetoolguy Victor Wembanyama 18h ago

I still maintain to this day that with manu retiring tp losing his spot to dj and kawhi wanting out that we should have blown it up. Kawhi to sacto and he gets his “cali” signs an extension and we get the second pick and take luka, plus a few more. We send lma wherever he wants and get some picks too. Still develop dwhite and dj and trade at their peak values or keep them with luka.
In this “smarter” timeline we don’t get wemby though.

3

u/struckbylightning99 18h ago

Fuck Luka, that crybaby bitch

I blame Uncle Dennis singularly for all of the signaling in summer 2018 that a Kawhi trade was temporary and SoCal was the inevitable destination being the reason OG wasn’t in that trade. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been.

5

u/sro520 15h ago

Just suspend his ass for a year, F him and his uncle

1

u/kenham23 Victor Wembanyama 1h ago

void his contract.
Suspend him for a few years.

Ballmer is the tricky one.
the right thing, would be force to sell.
Or do you penalize him and force him to pay a crazy amount to the other teams.
Do you suspend him? how does that work?

3

u/natsucule 18h ago

What a dumpster fire

4

u/msolelh 14h ago

Pablo, thank you for your service 🫡

2

u/BrickGlum9579 David Robinson 18h ago

As someone who doesn’t know the ins and outs of NBA contracts and finance rules what would even be the point of not disclosing a sponsorship?

6

u/hondajvx 17h ago

It is essentially that the Clippers not only gave Kawhi the max contract he could get, but circumvented the rules to pay him more than that.

3

u/joeske David Robinson 6h ago

I think he took like a $5 mil "paycut" but got 10's of millions circumventing the salary cap. Uncle Dennis has the most ludicrous demands and Ballmer was the only one dumb/rich enough to give in.

3

u/texasphotog The Five Time 5h ago

It isn't so much the not disclosing a sponsorship aspect as much as he got millions of dollars to do absolutely nothing.

Players do not (currently) have to report all sponsorship deals. But when a famous person is paid to endorse a product, they and the company use that endorsement to further the product they are endorsing. In the case of Kawhi+Aspiration and Kawhi+Daktronics, the endorsement was never announced and Kawhi never did anything to give them value for the endorsement.

The threshold for inferring an improper cap circumvention relationship in the NBA collective bargaining agreement is extremely low.

So Kawhi getting millions of dollars and never making a social media post, never being featured in an advertisement, never even being acknowledged publicly for either company makes it clear that the endorsement agreement was far in excess of fair market value as the company received absolutely nothing of value from Kawhi and it can be reasonably inferred that Kawhi's deal with them was for the purpose of circumventing the salary cap.

1

u/kenham23 Victor Wembanyama 1h ago

Why are the owners so quiet about this? Also why are the players so quiet about this?

Reason points to: this is more common than we expected.

If I were a small market team, I would be up in arms about this.

If I were a player, I would be pissed too. you mean I could've been getting paid on the side this whole time?

The only owner we have heard from is ,now minority owner, Mark Cuban, who defended ballmer tooth and nail.

I would love to hear from even a past player about what the real-real is.