[Fischer] An anonymous NBA agent suggests that Aspiration “likely had no insight into what going rates would be” and that lack of insight resulted in ridiculously priced deals with the Clippers like the $300M/23YR deal to become the Clippers’ jersey patch.

Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/marcstein/p/adam-silver-says-the-onus-is-on-the?r=nuq3a&utm_medium=ios

One agent I spoke to believes that Aspiration merely duped the Clippers and suggested that Aspiration likely had no insight into what going rates would be. Aspiration was not a company familiar with the sports industry. They weren't, in the end, even a legitimate entity. They offered the Clippers that $300 million in their jersey patch pitch over 23 years; compare that to Dallas' three-year, $33 million deal with Chime. Even the Golden State Warriors, when they first secured a staggering $20 million-a-year jersey patch deal with Rakuten in the heart of a five-straight-trips-to-the-NBA-Finals run in 2017, initially commanded a deal that only spanned three years ... not two decades.

Many are thus asking: How could Ballmer, such a savvy investor, have fallen for such a charade with such a dodgy outfit? The Clippers nonetheless maintain that Ballmer's $50 million investment — given his monstrous net worth of $150-plus billion — is routine for a businessman of his stature. It is also well-known that Ballmer had been highly focused on sustainability efforts throughout the Clippers' development and construction of the Intuit Dome, which opened last season. Green initiatives are said to be very important to Ballmer and his family. The fact that Aspiration was promising to help make the Clippers' arena "carbon neutral," as Ballmer shared in his chat with ESPN's Ramona Shelburne, was of significant interest to him. The team owner, sources say, does not even allow Clippers employees to use paper in their offices.

It also must be noted that the Clippers paid the maximum amount of money to Leonard that they were allowed to under the CBA on his August 2021 contract extension that was signed in the same timeline ballpark that the Clippers' relationship with Aspiration was developing. The Clippers even committed to that max deal while Leonard was in the midst of rehabbing a torn ACL sustained in the previous spring's playoffs. Every league figure contacted by The Stein Line agreed that the deal, on its face, was an ill-advised expenditure when viewed through a team lens. Yet now the Clippers point to that piece of the puzzle as justification for their position that they had no need or motive to funnel Leonard extra funds. They were at no risk of losing him and had just paid him top dollar, through a standard NBA contract, to not suit up for the Clippers in 2021-22.