NEW YORK -- The NBA has fined the Los Angeles Clippers $250,000 after an investigation found the team had violated league rules while trying to re-sign DeAndre Jordan last month.

The league said Tuesday that the Clippers had made a presentation to the then-free agent on July 2 that improperly included a potential third-party endorsement opportunity. League rules prohibit teams from arranging for others to provide compensation for a player unless it is included in a contract or is otherwise permitted by the collective bargaining agreement.

"We believed we were doing this the right way, and any circumvention was inadvertent," Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said in a letter obtained by the Orange County Register. "In our effort to support our players in every way possible, we as an organization must be diligent in complying with the CBA."

The NBA said the endorsement opportunity didn't impact Jordan's decision to re-sign with the Clippers.

A source told ESPN's Darren Rovell that the presentation the Clippers gave happened before Jordan even went to visit Dallas, so it didn't have an impact on his decision, and he didn't wind up doing the sponsorship deal.

Jordan eventually decided to stay with the Clippers after initially verbally committing to a deal with the Dallas Mavericks.

"As we, and the basketball world observed, DJ ultimately chose to stay with the Clippers because he felt it was his best opportunity to win a championship, and because of his desire to remain part of the Clippers family," Ballmer said.

The Charlotte Hornets are also cognizant of the anti-circumvention rule as team owner Michael Jordan cannot decide which NBA players get Jordan brand shoe deals.

Information from ESPN's Darren Rovell and The Associated Press was used in

Whether or not Jordan "signed" it is not the issue. This is clear circumvention of the established CBA and salary cap.

The league is lucky that Cuban simply let most of this matter go. Cuban is a media force now to be reckoned with , and in bed business wise with a lot of entities that deal with the league and the networks that broadcast the games. Cuban could have simply leveraged all that to bear against the NBA.

My take is Ballmer spent 2 billion, so this is his "mulligan" ( the league could have hit the Clippers much worse, if this was the NFL, the league would have gone pure scorched Earth here) Cuban simply weighed out adding to the embarrassment of the league administration and the ripple into the coming labor war when the net change would be none.

Karma is coming for the Clippers here. Journalist Charles Pierce said it best, you might hate Donald Sterling, you might loathe his views, but part and parcel, fundamentally did the NBA just strip a team and sell it for 2 billion to increase valuation of all NBA teams under the pretext of being offended by a person they tolerated for 20 years knowing who and what he was, trampling the concept of free speech, even if repugnant, along with it.

I don't hate the Clippers as much as the Patriots, but it's pretty damn close.

Pretty obvious what they did. And it probably just isn't them. I mean any player going to big market teams (especially) can have "perks" given to them to sign (beyond the contracts numbers).
This should be looked into more. To even be caught when it is so easy to circumvent is suspect!

wargames wrote:I think this is basically a makeup call for how the Clippers broke the spirit of the law and ****ed the Mavs over. Yeah its likely other teams do this and the league turns a blind eye to it. However, if the Clippers are going to break tradition to keep DJ the league can break tradition and fine them them for something they usually just ignore.

Good point!