NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Has a Steve Ballmer Problem on His Hands

There’s an ironic symmetry to the situation NBA Commissioner Adam Silver finds himself in with the Los Angeles Clippers and their owner, Steve Ballmer. In September the league announced it was investigating allegations that the Clippers had circumvented the NBA’s salary cap; the team is accused of funneling money to star forward Kawhi Leonard through a sham endorsement contract with a now-bankrupt climate finance startup in which Ballmer was an investor—a claim the Clippers and Leonard deny.

Eleven years ago it was Silver who issued a lifetime ban on then-owner Donald Sterling for making racist comments. That decision—made less than three months into Silver’s tenure and hailed at the time as a demonstration of his moral backbone and business savvy—triggered a chain of events that ended with Ballmer, then recently retired as chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., buying the Clippers for $2 billion.