What is the probability of confirming the contract of the small card Yin-Yang? The Clippers Championship Champions League window may be closed as a result

Are the Clippers and the Little Card involved in big trouble?

Earlier today, Paul Torre, a reporter from TA, revealed on his podcast that Kat signed a false endorsement contract with Aspiration, a suspected fraudulent bankrupt carbon neutrality (tree planting) company. After digging further, I found that the company's largest creditor was the Los Angeles Clippers, and the second largest creditor was an entertainment company owned by Clippers boss Ballmer. In addition, the false contract signed by Xiao Ka with Aspiration almost happened at the same time as his early contract renewal with the Clippers in 2021.

In 2021, Leonard could have signed a 1+1 contract with the Clippers with a total value of $82 million for a two-year total, and then wait until he owns the bird rights in the summer of 2022, and then breaks out of the contract to sign a 5-year super maximum salary. But in order to ensure the flexibility of the salary space, the Clippers negotiated and persuaded Xiaoka to give up the idea of ​​a five-year maximum salary, and instead directly signed a four-year, $175 million new contract in the summer of 2011. At that time, this signing was considered to be a big concession for the championship.

But according to the latest reports, while renewing the contract with the Clippers, Xiao Ka also obtained a four-year, 28 million endorsement contract from Aspiration, and the investor of this contract is also Clippers boss Ballmer. According to Torre, he only came to the above conclusion after spending 7 months, investigating 3,487 documents and interviewing multiple internal sources. In other words, he (conceived himself) the findings were full of evidence.

And after such a big mess was exposed, the Clippers also conducted crisis public relations as soon as possible. In the announcement, the Clippers denied Ballmer and the team were involved in the action of evading the salary cap or any other misconduct.

But according to another authoritative journalist Shams Kalanya, the NBA official has decided to conduct a comprehensive and detailed investigation into the matter...

Since Xiaoka joined in 2019, the Clippers have made the championship a goal. To this end, they not only spent a lot of money to equip Xiaoka with celebrity partners such as George and Harden, but also did not treat Xiaoka himself in terms of salary and benefits.

You should know that in addition to this contract renewal in 2021, Xiaoka also received a three-year renewal contract worth US$152.4 million in January 2024. At present, the contract has not been executed for two years.

Interestingly, just after renewing the contract with a small card in 2021, the Clippers have become the league's luxury tax major. Starting from the 2021-22 season, their total luxury tax expenditure in the next three years has reached an astonishing US$360 million.

Unfortunately, Ballmer's high investment did not gain the high returns that matched it. In the past six years, every effort to win the championship has been declared a failure. Xiao Ka has also been fighting and stopping during the Clippers' days, and his health has never been ideal. Now, the 34-year-old Xiaoka is at the turning point of the state curve, and her practical ability seems to be gradually moving away from her peak period...

In fact, after learning from the previous years of failure, the Clippers have made quite significant adjustments in the direction of the team's operation in the past two seasons.

Now, the Clippers' salary structure is quite healthy and reasonable. Next season, they have basically kept their total players' salary below the No. 1 tycoon line. By next summer, the Clippers' guaranteed salary on paper will only be 96 million US dollars. They will have about 70 million US dollars in salary space and are fully capable of recruiting a young super giant, thus opening a new era.

But after the latest Yin-Yang contract incident occurs, the Clippers' future blueprint may be disrupted.

Because once conclusive evidence is available, the NBA official punishment for such incidents is quite strict. 27 years ago, the incident of Joe Smith's transfer to the Timberwolves at a low price became a major scandal in the entire NBA and even North American sports circle because the traces of undercover operations were too obvious.

Later, the Timberwolves were fined $3.5 million for the incident and confiscated their first-round draft picks for the next five seasons (after reduced to 3). Smith also lost his reputation in this incident. He was deprived of the Bird clause and forced to become a free agent. After that, his career plummeted and he completely became a mediocre supporting role. Of course, not every question of the "yin and yang contract" was later punished. For example, in 2013, Kirilenko, nicknamed "AK47", chose to sign a basic salary contract of 3.18 million with the Nets because he broke out of his player option of $10.22 million, and was also targeted by the media.

Later, some media dug up the secret behind the signing, pointing out that in order to avoid luxury tax, the Nets boss Prokhorov also gave the latter other forms of asset compensation while signing the basic salary. In this regard, the NBA official also conducted a special investigation, but since the Nets (former) boss and Kirirenko are both Russians, the transfer of interests between them occurred overseas, and in the end, the investigation could only be left alone...

However, unlike the Kirirenko incident, the latest investigation locations are all in the United States, and the accounts and contract information are quite clear, so the possibility of confirming the Yin-Yang contract is completely present, or even relatively large. According to the current high market value of NBA teams and the huge influence of Kaji as a star, once things are true, the league's fines will only be greater than that of the Smith scandal. The future prospects of Xiaoka and the Clippers, as well as the championship map of the entire West, are likely to be affected by this emergency, and some subtle and unpredictable changes have occurred...