salary cap rule

Boom, goes the Clippers.

Steve Ballmer has been tattered. Lawrence Frank has been shredded. Their team future has been flattened.

Boom, goes those damn Clippers.

They had transformed themselves from the ridiculed Clip Joint to a top-shelf NBA organization, with the billionaire owner, the beautiful arena, the best coach and the most devoted fans … but they apparently got greedy, seemingly played dirty, and now have been affixed with a scarlet eight letters that will follow them forever.

Cheaters.

The NBA has ruled that the Clippers are cheaters.

Ballmer, cheater. Frank, cheater. Even president of business operations Gillian Zucker, cheater.

The NBA suspended Ballmer and Zucker for one year and Frank for six months Wednesday for violating salary cap rules when they signed Kawhi Leonard in 2019.

In arguably the harshest punishment in sports since SMU was given college football’s death penalty in 1987 — this is even worse than the USC sucker punch of 2010 — the league added injury to insult by stripping the team of five consecutive draft picks from 2029 to 2033.

The league also fined the team $30 million and Leonard $700,000 but the issue here is not money.

The issue is trust.

How can any of the Clippers partners or sponsors or fans trust this team with their dollars or their time or their affection after they were apparently caught knowingly breaking one of the NBA’s cardinal rules?

You don’t mess with the salary cap. Period. It’s the one thing that keeps these disparate teams and markets competing on a level field. Period.

Yet according to the findings of a lengthy investigation by the NBA, the Clippers’ top three executives — Ballmer, Frank and Zucker — helped arrange rich endorsement deals for Leonard that allowed him to make considerably more money than his contract states. Leonard did little if any endorsing, collected the extra checks, and essentially was paid above and beyond the salary cap.

The circumvention was first revealed a year ago by the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” which cited a $28-million endorsement deal with the now-bankrupt Aspiration, a sustainability services company. The subsequent NBA investigation discovered three more endorsement deals that amounted to similar salary cap circumvention, a charge which drew the particular ire of the league because the Clippers had been warned about salary cap circumvention with Leonard before.

Kawhi Leonard, above during a game against the Golden State Warriors at Intuit Dome in January, signed with the Clippers in 2019.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Bottom line, the Clippers seemingly flouted the rules, got burned, got punished, and now you have to wonder, how on earth do they move forward from this?

They started the recovery process immediately Wednesday by issuing a statement that accused the NBA of not playing fair.

“We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence,” the statement began.

They can let out one of those trademark Ballmer screams and it still won’t matter. There is no arbitration or appeals process available. The NBA’s ruling is final.

All of which leaves the Clippers facing serious questions about their future.

First, will Ballmer still have the local support to own the team? His absence from his traditional seat under the basket will serve as a nightly reminder that he commanded a dirty ship. Their most vocal cheerleader is now their biggest scoundrel, and how do you come back from that?

Although he made great strides in dragging the Clippers back into relevance since buying the team from the shamed Donald Sterling in 2014 — even building that cool arena in Inglewood — Ballmer has lost much credibility with this decision.

He may need to sell to help the organization shed its stink. There’s been so much peddling of billion-dollar franchises around town lately, surely some rich group is in a position to take the Clippers off his hands.

Stan Kroenke? Too late. Bob Iger and Josh Kushner? Too late. Mark Walter? Um, no. How about those Buss kids, or are they too busy making nice with Manny Machado?

Then there’s the matter of Frank, who was struggling to build sustained success before this scandal. It would be a surprise to see him return, just as it would be a surprise to see Zucker return. For the Clippers to come out of this mess, they’re going to need to retool at the top.

Which brings this story to one Clipper leader who was not indicted in the investigation. How much longer will Ty Lue, one of the league’s very best coaches, want to stick around this mess? He has three years left on his contract. That could be three long years.

Finally, what of Kawhi Leonard? The Clippers thankfully traded him back to Toronto this summer, and hopefully that is where he’ll stay if the trade gets taken off hold with the investigation complete.

In all, just when you thought the Clippers reputation in this town had long since moved past all those years of losing and insults and embarrassments and Sterling scandals, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…

It just got worse.