{"id":134753,"date":"2025-09-10T22:22:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T22:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134753\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T22:22:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T22:22:06","slug":"silver-says-expansion-deliberations-continue-nba-launches-investigation-into-ballmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134753\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver says expansion deliberations continue, NBA launches investigation into Ballmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEATTLE \u2014 Adam Silver said there has been no movement on NBA expansion after yet another meeting of the NBA Board of Governors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also said the league has launched an investigation into former Microsoft CEO and LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, regarding allegations he avoided league salary cap rules with the signing of Kawhi Leonard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The NBA Board of Governors is made up of league owners and representatives, and meets routinely on league business. Silver normally addresses the media on those business matters after the meeting.<\/p>\n

RELATED | NBA to open investigation into report that Clippers broke cap rules with Leonard deal<\/a><\/p>\n

“I think there are independent people looking at potential domestic expansion and then others looking at opportunities in Europe, and I see them as completely independent opportunities,” Silver responded after a question from ESPN’s Tim Bontemps about the league\u2019s interest in international expansion versus domestic expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is no new news to report today on domestic expansion, but it\u2019s something we continue to look at,” Silver added. “We did discuss it at the board meeting. I think that we\u2019ve spent a fair amount of time on the economic models around expansion. We\u2019ve gotten into more of, I\u2019d say, a deeper dive than when I last addressed the media on it. Certainly, now that we know what our media contracts are. That helps in doing the math, at least over the next decade. Part of the difficulty in potentially assessing it is a sense of long-term value of the league, and a little bit, maybe it\u2019s a high-class problem, but as with some of the recent jumps in franchise valuations, that sort of creates some confusion in the marketplace about how you might even price an expansion franchise. So I\u2019ll only say it\u2019s something that we continue to actively look at.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut to the extent anyone has taken from me a suggestion that Europe is more a priority than potential expansion in the U.S., it\u2019s not the case. I view it as two independent work streams here,\u201d said Silver.<\/p>\n

The biggest news was the fact that the NBA is probing Ballmer\u2014the wealthiest owner in the league\u2014over his handling of the signing of Leonard.<\/p>\n

Pablo Torre, a longtime reporter and podcaster, broke a story about the connections<\/a> between Ballmer, a now-defunct startup, and Leonard\u2019s endorsement deal. The reporting circled around whether the startup was used to circumvent league salary cap rules.<\/p>\n

Silver was asked repeatedly about it by reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the podcast came out, it was news to me,” Silver said. “I\u2019d frankly never heard of the company Aspiration before, and I\u2019d never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawhi or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers. So it was all new to me. I heard it. I saw some of the follow-up information.”<\/p>\n

“We spoke internally,” Silver added. “Rick Buchanan, our general counsel, is here, who oversees any investigations. Rick had a conversation with Steve Ballmer, and we quickly concluded this was something that rose to the level that necessitates an investigation, and in fact one that\u2019s done outside of our office. Wachtell Lipton, the New York law firm that we\u2019ve used in the past for investigations like this, is overseeing it.”<\/p>\n

Silver also said he’s a “big believer in due process and fairness, and we need to now let the investigation run its course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he didn’t lay out a plan for punishment, he discussed potential penalties.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy powers are very broad,” Silver said. “Full range of financial penalties \u2014 draft picks, suspensions, et cetera. I have very broad powers in these situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ballmer bought the Clippers in 2014<\/a> in a then-record $2 billion sale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Adam Silver said there has been no movement on NBA expansion after yet another meeting of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[23867,49,48,8840,22551,28461,14728,459,27803,82,65402],"class_list":["post-134753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-adam-silver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-clippers","tag-expansion","tag-investigation","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-nba","tag-salary-cap","tag-sports","tag-steve-ballmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}