Q All right, let's get to the punishment. What, what's been your reaction to Kawhi got a 700,000 dollar fine, doesn't feel very significant, at least, you know, compared to the, the actual payments and what was received, and then, uh, you have a, a one-year ban, uh, for, for Balmer, and then, but, but, What was your reaction to the, to the, to the verdict from the NBA?
A Yeah, um, this was the biggest punishment for an owner in the history of, I think, American professional sports, and the NBA took five first-round picks, which is the most you could imagine. They took thirty million dollars, which is a rounding error, of course, for Ballmer. They made him pay the fifty million dollar legal fee to Wachtell Lipton, the NBA's outside counsel, which is also a rounding error, but still, you know, Pretty annoying, I would imagine. Um, but the real thing that I thought was meaningful was that they banned Steve Ballmer from his own building for a year. He loves basketball. He sits courtside. He measured literally the toilets at the Intuit Dome when he was designing the whole building. He was a micromanager who knew everything about every piece of the building, and they banned him from being inside his own building, which he funded for two billion dollars privately to his credit, and they also banned his president of business for a year, and they banned his GM, his president of basketball, for six months, and so Kawhi got Effectively a slap on the wrist, and that is wild on the merits. The reason they did it briefly is because when Ballmer now is rattling his saber, because he is the former CEO of Microsoft, who when presented with antitrust findings by the literal federal government, also fought, right? This is unsurprising if you know the trajectory o…
AI assessment note: “this was the biggest punishment for an owner in the history of”