Monday and Tuesday\u2019s NBA\u2019s Board of Governors session is a newsflash waiting to happen, straight down to who shows up to rep the Clippers and the Lakers. Indications are Steve Ballmer won\u2019t and Jeanie Buss will, but, either way, the teams of L.A. are bringing dirty laundry East to N.Y.<\/p>\n
Officially, multiple team executives expect the plights of the two L.A. franchises (the Clippers\u2019 salary cap circumvention <\/a>and now federal criminal investigation<\/a>, plus Mark Walter\u2019s rushed Lakers sale<\/a>) to be discussed only in committee meetings — not in the general session. But after Ballmer issued a statement Sunday night ahead of the BOG session apologizing to his \u201cfellow team owners for the distraction and distress this matter has caused, for which I accept responsibility as principal owner,\u201d Commissioner Adam Silver can perhaps get back to talking about NBA Europe and expansion.<\/p>\n This week\u2019s BOG meeeting still won\u2019t be business as usual — considering Silver is certain to be peppered with Ballmer\/Kawhi Leonard\/feds\/Walter\/Buss questions during his Tuesday news conference — but it definitely simmered down a bit with Ballmer\u2019s Sunday night admission that he will accept the sweeping penalties levied by the league. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have communicated to the NBA that we are complying with the penalties assessed by the league, have paid the [$30M] fine and are moving forward,\u201d Ballmer said. \u201cWhile there are still disagreements concerning the findings in the [Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz] report, this is not where I want to focus. Team owners should support, not distract.\u201d<\/p>\n Silver suspended Ballmer, President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker and President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank. Most believe Chief Commercial Officer Scott Sonnenberg will rep the Clippers in the short term.<\/p>\n As for the Lakers, sources do not expect the proposed $12.5B sale from Walter to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger to be voted on this week. But if team governor Buss walks through the door Monday — and another team governor said \u201cI assume Jeanie will\u201d — the question becomes whether it\u2019s her final BOG meeting. Her siblings have voted to sell the family\u2019s stake in the team, and reports are she will fight them in court<\/a>. Considering she\u2019s been attending these sessions since the 1990s, she has longstanding relationships, particularly with Silver, and almost universal support in the room.<\/p>\n Silver has a knack for managing drama and sticking to the agenda, and executives believe the general BOG sessions this week will focus on NBA Europe, expansion and local TV — and there are crucial developments there, too.<\/p>\n A report from the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport intimated that, following Monday\u2019s BOG meeting, the NBA could make an offer to purchase EuroLeague, which would carry seismic implications. As of now, EuroLeague plans to expand from 12 to 20 teams for the 2027-28 season, which is when NBA Europe is supposed to launch. But EuroLeague has its own quasi-BOG meeting scheduled for Oct. 5 and La Gazzetta dello Sport speculates that if the NBA offers to buy the league, there could be a vote then whether to accept. The thought of an NBA Europe with the top EuroLeague franchises (Real Madrid, Barcelona, etc.) would almost guarantee success. Not all of the EuroLeague clubs would join NBA Europe at first — some could play in a secondary league and await NBA Europe expansion — but the NBA would essentially rule European basketball at that point. The BOG will be briefed on the possibilities this week.<\/p>\n The BOG will also be alerted about the status of Las Vegas<\/a> and Seattle expansion bids. The leader in Vegas appears to be the Laurie Group (Walmart\u2019s Nancy Walton Laurie and her husband Bill), while, in Seattle, Kraken owner Samantha Holloway<\/a> is in competition with a BlackSun Private Equity group<\/a> led by CEO Atonn Muhammad, in concert with Tulalip Tribes. BOG sources do not expect a vote or decision this week.<\/p>\n Local TV is another potential topic, considering the NBA\u2019s former Main Street Sports Group teams have all done one-year deals or one-year escape clauses in anticipation of a centralized streaming hub for 2027-28. YouTube, DAZN, Amazon and ESPN have all shown interest <\/a>in housing the aggregated platform, with YouTube as the presumed frontrunner. But DAZN will host a third of the league — up to perhaps half of the league — on its app this coming season, and the league will certainly update the BOG on the status of the four-way negotiation. Sources have said the league hopes bids reach $1B-plus if as many as 25 teams opt in to the local hub. But it\u2019s unclear whether the league will conduct a straw poll this week of who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday and Tuesday\u2019s NBA\u2019s Board of Governors session is a newsflash waiting to happen, straight down to who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-891805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}