A statement on a Sunday night
Steve Ballmer stopped fighting. The LA Clippers owner put out a statement late Sunday night saying the franchise has paid its $30 million fine, is complying with every penalty the NBA handed down, and will not take the league to court over any of it.
“This has been a very difficult time for everybody associated with the Clippers, and for that, I have sincere regrets,” the statement read. He apologized to supporters, to employees and to the other 29 owners for what he called the distraction and distress of the whole affair, and said he accepted responsibility as principal owner.
That is a long way from where the Clippers stood a few weeks ago.
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From witch hunt to compliance
The league published its findings earlier this month after an investigation that ran close to a year into the club’s dealings with Kawhi Leonard. The verdict was brutal. Five first-round picks gone, covering 2029 through 2033. A $30 million fine. A one-year suspension for Ballmer himself. The NBA described a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by a franchise it labeled a prior offender on salary cap circumvention.
The Clippers promised to challenge all of it through every avenue available to them. Ballmer’s lawyer wrote to Adam Silver calling the investigation a witch hunt and the penalties a gross injustice. Right up until the report landed, the club insisted it had done nothing wrong and expected to be cleared.
Ballmer still does not agree with the findings. He said so again on Sunday. He has simply decided the argument costs more than it is worth. “Team owners should support, not distract,” he said.
The timing tells its own story
The statement arrived one day before the NBA board of governors gathers in New York, and days after reports that federal investigators had opened their own inquiry into the Clippers’ arrangements with Leonard. A room full of fellow owners was never going to be a comfortable place to sit while still calling the league’s process a witch hunt in public.
Leonard escaped a suspension. The two-time Finals MVP owes the league $700,000 and keeps playing. The picks are the part that will hurt longest: five drafts stripped out of a single decade, at a club built to win now, with an owner who cannot set foot in the building for a year.
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