Welcome on to Hollinger and Duncan and I can inform you all that John tried to get out of this recording.

He said that recording on Saturdays at 9 a.m. was against his beliefs and that he had a clause in the contract.

He didn't have to do anything against his beliefs.

But after checking the contract, no such clause existed because that would be an unenforceable contract.

So John is here very much against his will, I'm sure, to record here.

It's the least I could do after you paid me $48 million to plant a few trees.

All right.

Well, I guess let's get talking about here.

I did, you know, I gave about 25 minutes or so of my own thoughts on the Kauai Leonard thing on

the day that it broke.

So I want you to, you know, you've had a few days now to kind of take in the initial reaction, some of the reporting, some of the follow-up reporting, Steve Ballmer, his interview with Ramona Shelburne a couple days ago. So I'll just start you off here. You know, what are you, what are your, were your initial thoughts? What do you think isn't being talked about enough,

uh, especially as a former small market executive?

Yeah.

So, um, I, this goes one of two ways to me.

A, it was a, uh, scammy, not well run company that was trying to do some kind of financial shenanigans via

this sponsorship deal with kawai or b it was steve balmer indirectly paying kai outside of the

constraints of the salary cap if it is is B, it is huge, the league is going to absolutely hammer them.

The other 29 owners will insist on it.

I would expect, like, if they rule that this was Steve Balmer paying Kauai Leonard indirectly,

I would expect them to void Kauai's contract. I would expect them to take away all five

of the remaining first round picks that the Clippers have. I would expect them to suspend

Balmer for a year, possibly other Clippers executives if they had any awareness of this at all.

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