In terms of “well why did they pay him all that money to do nothing then?” if Ballmer really wasn’t involved (and I haven’t seen any hard evidence showing he was), then his answer of “I don’t know, I haven’t seen the terms of that contract because it was between Aspiration and Kawhi” is eminently reasonable.

I didn’t know that it was common and/or legal for NBA teams to “introduce” players to corporate sponsors as long as the team wasn’t involved w/ anything beyond the introduction, but like…that sounds shady af, honestly. And on top of that, Aspiration as a company also seemed shady af, so it’s a giant, convoluted pile of shadiness that I’m not ready to make any conclusions about until/unless we get some info beyond Pablo and the Clippers – you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not exactly enthusiastic about listening to Stephen A Smith and Skip Bayless rant/ramble mostly incoherently about this topic.

I really hate to suggest sticking to Clippers “safe spaces,” but given how insane (and unfounded as of now) the hatred and bloodlust for the Clippers is on places like NBA Reddit, YouTube, and obviously Twitter, do yourselves a favor and avoid those for a while – this will sort itself out eventually as the NBA investigation progresses. There’ll be plenty of time to rage and curse the Gods if/when we get word that the NBA is giving us the Joe Smith death penalty, so we might as well sit back and chill in the meantime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXttWS6z1EY