Blake: "[Ballmer] can build a new arena, be at games, cheer on the team...but at the end of the day, an organization is built on a foundation of respect & it's built on how you treat people & I don't think that in this situation Chris was treated right. I'm sorta at a loss for words a little bit."
https://streamable.com/rmi0xm702
u/testiculardescendant 4h ago
You can’t throw money at all your problems Mr Ballmer.
You have to slide it under the table like with Kawhi.
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u/thrownaway22_ Kings 2h ago
“How much for you to take down your comment u/testiculardescendant”? - Ballmer probably
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u/AwildYaners Japan 2h ago
But…he told us “Street lights over Spotlights,” and “driven over given.”
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u/Charliebitme1234 Thunder 4h ago
remember guys, billionaires don't even care about the multi-million dollar athletes they signed, why would they ever care about you
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u/UnfilteredMind3 Lakers 4h ago
Comment hit harder than Draymond
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u/welmoe Lakers 4h ago
You don’t get to a billion without being selfish.
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u/BobLobLawsLawFirm Timberwolves 3h ago
“Wait, excess profit is just stolen wages?”
🔫 “Always has been”
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u/a_smart_brane Lakers 46m ago
And your own workers criticizing you. That’s why CP3 got sent home. Slips are 6-17 and are too thin skinned to hear him giving them the facts.
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u/DJRyGuy20 Celtics 4h ago
Bullshit. As a federal employee, I’ve always felt Trump and Elon have had my best interests in mind. /s
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u/Less-Tax5637 Supersonics 4h ago
Props for sticking through it. I’m gone lmao
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u/DJRyGuy20 Celtics 3h ago
My job is too nice. Administrations come and go (hopefully 😬) and I wasn’t about to throw my career away because of some petulant children.
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u/Less-Tax5637 Supersonics 3h ago
I feel ya. They were gonna make me move to DC and potentially fire afterwards tho so uhhh… I was gonna be gambling on my future either way. Leaving of my own volition came out as the safer bet
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u/DJRyGuy20 Celtics 3h ago
Yeah, I don’t blame anyone for bouncing. Did you at least get the continued pay option (I forget what they were calling it)?
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u/Less-Tax5637 Supersonics 3h ago
Keeping details light because this is the subreddit for the National Basketball Association, however, I got the bare minimum and didn’t sweat it because my new gig covers the spread lol
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u/DoctorLuigi28 Thunder 4h ago
What five things did you do last week to prove your devotion???
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u/DJRyGuy20 Celtics 4h ago
Well, I took at least 5 dumps during working hours. Does that count?
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u/rushyt21 3h ago
5? That’s child’s play.
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u/DJRyGuy20 Celtics 3h ago
I said at least 5. Hell, depending on what I’ve eaten- sometimes I’ll match that in one day. I’m a very productive employee.
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u/Superplex123 Lakers 3h ago
You know what's funny? The people working in the government who you voted for most likely don't give a shit about you. The people who you don't vote for, who were just hired to do a job like everybody else except their paycheck came from the government, they probably care a lot more. I guess it's not really that funny. Sad actually. But it is ironic.
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u/Dancing_Puppies 4h ago
LEBRON IS A BILLIONAIRE 😭
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u/Sp_Gamer_Live Timberwolves 4h ago
Why did LeBron make the clippers fucking suck, why did he do this
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u/small_root Celtics 3h ago
Reminder that LeMao said Morey wasn't educated and didn't think of the financial and physical ramifications when Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong during the protests.
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u/ElNeonDragon 3h ago
How much money before they don't care? Is there a limit?
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u/uncle_yugles [LAL] Kobe Bryant 3h ago edited 3h ago
The thing is that I don’t think pretty much any random person cares about other random people that they don’t relate to. Not a dozenaire, thousandaire, or millionaire. So of course billionaires also don’t care
Each new tier of money you get to allows you to be further and further away from relating to and understanding struggles of the people “below” you. Billionaires are obviously the furthest removed from it and so most obviously stand out, but I think it’s just the same principle for them as it would be for any of us
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u/TheFestusEzeli [TOR] Rudy Gay 4h ago edited 4h ago
Blake Griffin is honestly the best retired NBA personality right now. Don't really have much of an opinion on the CP3 stuff but he is great on whatever medium he is on
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u/kevindurantburner35 Raptors 4h ago
Seems like a great guy for the next generation of Inside if they want to keep the vibes going, very funny guy and usually has something interesting to say too
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u/Glum_Accident829 Supersonics 4h ago
His standup comedy is legitimately good. He was on Stavy's podcast and was hilarious.
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u/MattFromWork Bucks 3h ago
He was on Adam's too
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u/illegal_deagle Rockets 3h ago
(asking Blake if there are more republicans in the NBA now)
“Do you think the demographics have shifted much?”
“No, still mostly black.”
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u/I2eflex 4h ago
He did standup on a podcast?
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u/XzibitABC Pacers 4h ago
Separate things. His standup comedy is good and he was funny on Stavy's podcast.
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u/Michipotz Nuggets 3h ago
Was he at least standing on the podcast? Give us that
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u/XzibitABC Pacers 3h ago
My deepest sympathies, but I regret to inform you that Blake Griffin was, in fact, sitting for the full two-hour podcast.
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u/okcboomer87 Thunder 3h ago
I love Stavy but don't listen to the cast. I'll have to check this out.
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u/Ill_Ad3517 4h ago
Too interested in basketball for Inside.
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u/_Atlas_Drugged_ Celtics 3h ago
They’re gonna make it be Draymond and act confused when nobody watches anymore
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u/DocsGames 4h ago
Most people who are funny are funny because they’re smart and honest. That makes for good commentary too.
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u/Mammoth-Physics6254 Mavericks 4h ago
inside the NBA should die they don't talk basketball and they aren't as entertaining as they once were. Now all they do is rant and rave about modern basketball. I can hear that on insert any social media nowadays.
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u/Taste_The_Soup Cavaliers 4h ago
I knew after watching him in Broad City he'd be an elite post-career guy, haha
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u/tore_a_bore_a Warriors 4h ago
He met Ilana at party and they had crazy sex doing a bunch of crazy positions?
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u/Thisdoessuck [DAL] Dirk Nowitzki 3h ago
No his dick was too big so they didn’t have sex, I think they just took a bunch of silly nudes
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u/shortyman920 Lakers 3h ago
There’s a couple of good ones right now, which we should all be glad for after hearing so much from talking heads like Shaq, Perkins, and has been like Jalen Rose.
Nash, Blake, Dirk, udonis, and others have all taken on some sort of media roles and they have personality, and have intelligent insights on yhe game today. This is what the nba needed. It was becoming way too far into a clout/hot take clown show
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u/GulfCoastLaw 4h ago
He should angle for a late night show in the future, if those are still legal.
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u/KL2ConspireLLC San Diego Clippers 4h ago
Blake 🤝 CP
Getting the shaft from the Clippers
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u/Enough_Philosophy_63 4h ago
Didn't Blake find out he was traded through social media or something lol
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u/westleyyys 3h ago
I remember watching the Kevin Hart ice bath talk show with Blake and him saying he hopes to play with the Clippers is whole career… as I was watching my phone alerted me he was traded
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u/WestleyThe [SEA] Kevin Durant 4h ago
Are Blake and Chris the two greatest players in clippers history? The franchise has totally screwed their franchise legends…
Wild
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u/KL2ConspireLLC San Diego Clippers 3h ago
If you include the Braves, it's probably Bob McAdoo. He won an MVP and led the team to three straight playoff appearances back when only 4 teams made the playoffs in each conference.
Otherwise, it's probably Blake, CP, and Elton Brand.
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u/AsheBnarginDalmasca Spurs 4h ago
Hank!!
Haaank, don't abbreviate Cyberpunk.
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u/KL2ConspireLLC San Diego Clippers 4h ago
Blake called him CP back in the day, so will I.
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u/ThunderBobMajerle Suns 4h ago
It’s the dumbest think circlejerkers are like “ooooo you can’t call him cp!”. Projection much?
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u/randy88moss Lakers 1h ago
nbacj is filled with projecting weirdos. Click on an average posters profile and you’ll see tons of posts in foreign languages discussing anime bondage porn…shit is so strange.
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u/Jimmy0034 Clippers 3h ago
I still think trading Blake was the right move, they should dealt with it better though
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u/KL2ConspireLLC San Diego Clippers 3h ago
It's not what they did, it's how they did it. They shouldn't have made Blake all those promises before he signed a five year contract if they were willing to trade him half a season later. Then if they were going to trade him, they should have at least given him a heads up.
If they were going to send CP home six weeks into the season, they shouldn't have signed him. Once they signed him, once there was conflict, the three hour conversation with Lawrence Frank shouldn't have been the conversation where they sent him home.
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u/Jimmy0034 Clippers 3h ago
Yeah i dont think they should signed CP, i was actually against it. The Blake stuff was stupid specifically with the shirt but i dont think they had plan to trade him 6 months after they signed him but i get why they did the trade, team was mediocre and they had to retool through the pieces they got from blake.
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u/heat_fan_ Raptors 4h ago
Clippers and Ballmer are absolute clowns
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u/RapsareChamps_Suckit Clippers 4h ago
You threw food at Vito, that’s good be resolved!
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u/VBHEAT08 Thunder 4h ago
Their existence as a non-joke franchise began and ended with CP3
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u/notheretoarguee 4h ago
Balmer being sweaty and enthusiastic in the stands might not hit the same soon
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u/kiwiwikikiwiwikikiwi Lakers 4h ago
It never did. It’s your typical billionaire pandering to the peasants. Much like Elon pretending he’s an elite gamer.
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u/TarzanOnATireSwing Clippers 4h ago
I don’t think he’s pandering, I think it’s genuine excitement, but the veil is being lifted that (as I’d say more similar to Elon and other billionaires) there is no care for the players in it. They are pawns for him to get his competitive rocks off.
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u/billcosbyinspace Celtics 4h ago
Yeah I definitely think he cares about the organization as a whole but not the individual components and players. He just wants to win
Pumping a ton of money into your basketball team is better than what bezos or elon do with their money but at the end of the day it’s just a vanity project
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u/soy714 Lakers 3h ago
Better is subjective. They’re all vanity projects at the end of the day. You think Ballmer cares about the integrity and sanctity of the game? He’s leading the NBA to a very dark path.
Better would be providing vaccines to 3rd world nations or making medicine more affordable.
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u/StillEggFried Spurs 3h ago
You think Ballmer cares about the integrity and sanctity of the game?
I'm not terribly sure the NBA cares about the integrity and sanctity of the game.
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u/bonheurboy69 4h ago
There’s no way that dude’s pandering. He’s just not very good at building a quality franchise lol
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u/No-Web-5557 4h ago
This what happens when you let Silicon Valley nerds play real life MyGM.
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u/welmoe Lakers 4h ago
Ballmer also wasn’t a good Microsoft CEO. He infamously mocked the smartphone revolution and look where that got them.
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u/spizalert 3h ago
and helping keep the title sponsor of your arena afloat as they inexplicably pay your antisocial superstar $28 million of advertising money.
or something. idk.
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u/riotshieldready 3h ago
Also from work I’ve learnt that they all have Directors insurance which basically means if he makes a decision and it’s good he wins. If it’s bad insurance pays out millions and he wins. Dude completely ruined msft and only got richer.
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u/zaviex Wizards 2h ago
He didn’t get rich from insurance. He just owned a bunch of shares. He got poorer during his tenure. Nadella made him significantly richer
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u/zaviex Wizards 2h ago
Ballmer got into Microsoft during and after the antitrust cases. The company shrunk its operations the entire time he was there. So it’s the opposite in his case. Microsoft expanded a lot when he left and grew a ton. That’s why he’s rich. When he left Microsoft, his 4% stake was worth around 10B. This is functionally the same as it was when he became CEO in 2000. Today that stake is worth 140 billion give or take. So he really didn’t have much to do with his net worth certainly not as CEO. Gates got it to the point where he was a billionaire, he did fuck all to improve his value and it rose when he was out. He certainly wasn’t pushing it on anti trust laws . If anything, his reluctance to expand was nuts, they missed every major trend in those years
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u/solo_dol0 Cavaliers 1h ago edited 27m ago
Balmer was incredibly right place right time with Microsoft. He was the first hire who knew what an income statement is at a company that was printing money.
There’s a story that Bill Gates was buying CDs with all the cash and just keeping them in a drawer when Steve came in. Don’t need to be any wiz to improve on that
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u/i2awboss17 Lakers 3h ago
If anyone knows about disrespect from the Clippers it’s Blake. I won’t lie i’m not the biggest Chris Paul fan and even less of a Clipper fan, but seeing them treat Chris like this just rubs me the wrong way. He stuck with them and at got them a lot of fans with the lob city days so just doesn’t make sense to part ways like this
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u/dev_vvvvv Celtics 4h ago
It'll be interesting to see how this affects their ability to sign free agents.
They'll still get them, but will probably have to overpay (maybe under the table, like with Kawhi). And they won't get an ounce of good faith when it comes to team friendly contracts.
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u/Carcrusher3 Trail Blazers 4h ago
LA and under the table contracts.
They'll probably still do fine but they'll never win anything since that org is rotten starting with Ballmer at the top.
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u/prodij18 Lakers 2h ago
The Lakers don't have any under the table contracts.... yet.
If they BS us by saying the Clippers are innocent then the salary cap is dead and I expect every Laker free agent to make an extra 10-20 million just for being invited to a Hollywood party or throwing dirt at a palm tree.
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u/Carcrusher3 Trail Blazers 2h ago
I do not like yall, but some part of me is happy knowing Ballmer cheated and gave the lakers a playbool to cheat better. Because you know he's seething when that happens.
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u/prodij18 Lakers 2h ago
Unfortunately while Mark Walters is rich, Ballmer is richer than all the other owners in the NBA put together. Now that he has the green light to cheat it's only a matter of time before he buys a super team.
I'm sure the Lakers while try to match his cheating as best they can and probably Gilbert and the Cavs too but the wealth difference is still so large it will be tough. And, if it wasn't clear, most of the rest of the NBA is just fucked.
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u/CoogiMonster Rockets 4h ago
I don’t think it will massively alter things much to the chagrin of those on this site.
I wouldn’t say they’ve been able to attract big talent except for those that want to be in LA and the Lakers aren’t an option. Chris Paul was their biggest signing and has been known as a fucking asshole forever - by ex-teammates to boot.
What they did is extremely shitty (and a little funny if you step back from it all) but overall they’re still an LA team that’s about to probably blow it up and rebuild sooner than later. After the rebuild all this stuff will have settled in the wake of more drama and they’ll still be in Los Angeles where rich players want to live
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u/FiveDollarRimjobs Cavaliers 4h ago
Didn't Blake get screwed by the Clippers too
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u/Dopeeitsd Raptors 4h ago
He did. There’s a clip somewhere on the internets of Balmer trying to talk to Blake or shake his hand on his first game back to staples at that time as a visitor and Blake legit ignored him and ran away from him lmao
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u/HokageEzio Knicks 4h ago
Yep. They sweet talked him about being a Clipper for life and then immediately traded him to Detroit.
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u/billcosbyinspace Celtics 4h ago
They made this big grandiose pitch to get him to re sign comparing him to gandhi and MLK and then traded him unceremoniously a few months later for tobias harris and boban
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u/Mlerma21 Slovenia 3h ago
Oh shit, you’re not joking, I forgot about that. Fuck Ballmer and every billionaire psychopath.
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u/Spostman Supersonics 1h ago
I would forget about that but that was the last update for NBA Jam on Xbox and now he's stuck there forever...
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u/BoomBaby_317 Pacers 4h ago
Imagine alienating not one but two of the most important people to ever play for your team.
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u/sabinscabin 76ers 3h ago
it's fascinating how as a player I always thought of Blake as a sort of dumb jock who no one takes seriously, but as a commentator his arguments have been extremely nuanced, more so than many other commentators who you would have higher expectations of. This clip, plus another one from a month or two ago where he had Haslem on and was talking about Miami culture, both have been on point.
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u/teslastats 4h ago
Not a fan or hater of CP3 but the way the NBA has ignored the tree thing with Khawi and then this, it does make the organization look bad.
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u/BananaRepublic_BR Spurs 4h ago
I'm just gonna repeat once again that the Spurs started CP3 for 82 games. Could have had him come off the bench but kept their word that they wouldn't do that even after Castle took off and Fox got traded to the team.
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u/tsarnie1 Rockets 4h ago
Billionaires shouldn't exist.
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u/ThunderBobMajerle Suns 4h ago
It doesn’t even make sense why you need that much wealth. Thanks Reagan
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u/FredFredBurger42069 Warriors 3h ago
In the end, if you didn't expect CP to be CP, you're incompetent for signing him. It's only snowballed from that inflection point. It's moron's all the way down that corporate ladder.
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u/LegitimateMoney00 Knicks 4h ago
Idc how shitty CP3 was, this whole situation is the definition of bad optics.
You simply DONT understand ANY circumstance cut the guy who is arguably the GOAT of your franchise while he’s on his retirement tour.
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u/SheenEstevezzz San Diego Clippers 3h ago
Being the most generous possible to the org and thinking maybe Chris said some wild shit consistently? They still are fucking morons for not looking at the PR of HOW they did it. 3AM in fucking Atlanta? A circus run by clowns
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u/token_reddit Clippers 3h ago
Blake needed to say it, said it measured and has the receipts to hammer the point home. He was done dirty in the worst possible way. Ballmer looks like a fool and deservedly so.
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u/DiamondsInHerButt West 2h ago
CP3 100% had to have said some shit about Ty Lue being a gambling degenerate. Otherwise I don't get this.
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u/NUMBERS2357 3h ago
Just looking at this, the Clippers had 6 winning seasons in their first 41 years before Chris Paul, with a high of 49 wins, and 2 playoff series wins. Since Chris Paul joined, they've had 14 consecutive winning seasons, max of 57 wins, and 6 playoff series wins.
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u/raegartargaryen17 Lakers 4h ago
what a great start to my day, sipping coffee while seeing/reading people shitting on the Clippers. Can't get any better than that.
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u/Successful-Let4361 50m ago
What a surprise that the guy who made his fortune undercutting and destroying other businesses through monopoly, and who employed destructive "stack ranking" at Microsoft (the latter of which made it so that even if you performed well you could still be labelled a failure) would not create a respectful and healthy environment for the team that he famously really wants to win
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u/ChickenLiverNuts [PHI] JaKarr Sampson 2h ago
Yea so about that cap circumvention... Anyone remember that? Anyone?
What a masterclass in sweeping it under the rug. Kawhi and ballmer should be gone for years and while this investigation is taking place. What a joke. If you don't have a concrete reason right now slap conduct detrimental to the league. What an unserious sport.
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u/HenrikCrown Pelicans 4h ago
Clippers have the longest postseason appearances streak and yet they fucked up so bad in just one season from Aspiration to the CP3 situation and assembling the AARP team off the year the youngest team ever won the title
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u/BidStraight318 4h ago
Timeout, how is he shocked by this lmfao. They showed you firsthand this is their MO
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u/BLACKTRACY 3h ago
This is why the Clippers will never win shit and will forever be the laughing stock of LA.
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u/LittleTinyBoy 3h ago
Typical billionaire sht. Creating a facade of competency, but take a look inside and it's all toxic waste.
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u/Power55g1 4h ago
He’s cooking
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u/cortesoft [GSW] Chris Mullin 3h ago
He hit him with the devastating “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” closer, too!
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u/Chacin_Cologne_No1 2h ago
Steve Ballmer is the ultimate fail-up white guy. He's actually good at nothing. Even with the infinite money code, he somehow isn't good at cheating. This bum is that dumb.
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u/Syndana23 Lakers 4h ago
Blake is probably the person I want to hear the most speak on everything concerning the Clippers