Rumors

"We were done. We were done with Kawhi, we were done with Aspiration. The deals were all locked and loaded," Ballmer said. "Then, they did request to be introduced to Kawhi, and under the rules, we can introduce our sponsors to our athletes. We just can't be involved. "We made an introduction, that was in early November." Ballmer added that he had been reviewing his interaction with the company as part of his and the team's cooperation with a Department of Justice investigation into Aspiration. Last month, co-founder Joe Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud for defrauding investors and lenders of more than $248 million. "We even found the email that makes the first introduction. It was early November," Ballmer said. "The introduction got made and then they were off to the races on, on their own. We weren't involved. "I eventually learned that they had reached a deal. I have no idea what the deal was."

ESPN

Dan LeBatard: But this has the potential to be the biggest salary cap crime that we've seen. Pablo Torre: Yes. Yes. $28 million. And that, by the way, for the T-Wolves in that era in the '90s, five first-round picks, suspensions for the owner of the team for Glenn Taylor as well as other punishments down the line. But this this as tied into again an ongoing SEC DOJ investigation into fraud by this green bank, this climate change friendly company whose biggest investor or at least the most important, influential, notable investor was Steve Ballmer who put in $50 million of his own money. I mean, this is not merely a story about salary caps or circumvention. This is now a question that the seven sources I spoke to are asking. What else did Steve Balmer know about this?

YouTube

Malik Beasley isn’t out of the water with a federal gambling investigation–yet. Beasley is no longer the “target” of the Easter District of New York probe, ESPN reported Friday, potentially opening the door for the 3-point specialist to sign with a team with a month to go before NBA training camps open. Investigators are reportedly focusing on a handful of games during Beasley’s tenure with the Bucks from the 2023–24 season in which at least one prominent U.S. sportsbook detected unusual prop bet activity, according to ESPN. To federal prosecutors, “target” has a specific and narrow technical definition. The Department of Justice defines a “target”as “a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.” But Beasley is still considered a “subject” of the investigation, according to a source with knowledge of it. The Department of Justice defines a subject as “a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury’s investigation,” which means Beasley could still be charged with a crime, something his lawyers have acknowledged.

Front Office Sports

Anthony Chiang: The United States Department of Justice just issued a press release on the Heat memorabilia heist: "A former employee of the Miami Heat made his initial appearance in federal court today on a one-count information charging him with transporting and transferring stolen goods in interstate commerce. According to the charging document, Marcos Thomas Perez, 62, of Miami, is accused of stealing millions of dollars’ worth of Miami Heat game-worn jerseys and other valuable memorabilia, which he later sold to online brokers."

x.com

Since pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery in March 2019, Chuck Person has been one of the few targets of the Department of Justice’s controversial college basketball corruption probe to have maintained his silence, declining numerous interview requests from reporters until now. In a brief telephone call this week with Sportico, a cautious Person spoke publicly about his former team for the first time since he was sentenced, revealing that he plans to attend Auburn’s Sweet 16 game against Michigan in Atlanta on Friday. “I feel like I had a hand in revitalizing the program,” said Person, who resides in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, Ga.. “We brought in a great bunch of kids, with great talent and great character.”

Sportico

Police in Canada have opened a criminal investigation into the betting scandal that resulted in former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter being banned from the NBA, a spokesperson for the Ontario Provincial Police confirmed Wednesday. The OPP’s Investigation and Enforcement Bureau determined that a criminal investigation was warranted after it completed its assessment of betting irregularities related to Raptors games, Robert Simpson, the OPP spokesman, said. The OPP’s active and ongoing investigation will focus on Raptors games in Toronto on Jan. 26, 2024, and March 20, 2024. The alleged betting impropriety has already seen four men charged by the U.S. Department of Justice.

New York Times

Not only is Aspiration no longer a team sponsor, but “investigators from the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are looking into whether Aspiration misled customers about the quality of carbon offsets it was selling, according to people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg reports.

KTLA 5

TMZ Sports has learned the DOJ launched the inquiry months ago, examining alleged anticompetitive behavior on the part of the NBA, aimed at squashing the Big3's growth. Those allegations, we're told, range from the NBA purportedly throwing its weight around to prevent sponsors and others potential partners from doing business with the rap legend's league ... to discouraging television networks from carrying Big3 games.

TMZ.com

Former NBA player Terrence Williams, the ringleader of a scheme to defraud the NBA’s health plan, pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, the Department of Justice announced Friday. “Williams led a scheme involving more than 18 former NBA players, a dentist, a doctor, and a chiropractor, to defraud the NBA Players’ Health and Welfare Benefit Plan of millions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement. “Williams also impersonated others to help him take what was not his — money that belonged to the Plan.”

The “Black Lives Matter” decals are gone from the court. There are no social justice messages on the backs of jerseys and no one is kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. Today, the NBA’s activism is conducted in part out of a home office inside a brick, two-story home in Washington, D.C. Built in 1925, the front porch has four columns and a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, all of it underneath an open-air, second-story balcony. The home covers 4,200 square feet and is worth more than $1.4 million. There are four beds and four baths. Inside the office, James Cadogan, 40, has a framed photo of him and former President Barack Obama, for whom he first worked as a campaign aide in 2008, and another photo of him with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whom he served as senior counsel when she headed the U.S. Department of Justice. Also on the wall is Cadogan’s Michael Jordan shooting shirt from 1992.

The Athletic

Sarah Todd: The release from the DOJ U.S. Attorney includes this (text messages) about Keyon Dooling's involvement:

Twitter

REFORM claims to have raised more since then but would not provide CNBC with an exact figure. But since establishing REFORM, Rubin said 13 bills were passed in eight states, including California, where probation is now capped at two years for most violations. He added legislation in Pennsylvania is now at the state senate level. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “community supervision,” -- those on probation or parole -- dropped from more than 4.1 million individuals supervised to roughly 3.8 million during 2020. And for probation only, down 8.3% the largest annual decline for those on probation since in 1980.

CNBC

James Cadogan: I am the executive director of the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, which leads the NBA family’s advocacy work. But, in 2014, I was managing the policy portfolio of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice when Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Yahoo! Sports

Among its many proposed changes to federal laws regarding policing, the GFPA would: • Limit “qualified immunity” – which protects individual police officers from being held personally liable for monetary damages for constitutional violations under federal law, if the officers did not violate “clearly established” law. • Limit unnecessary use of force, and restrict the use of no-knock warrants, carotid holds and chokeholds. • Create a national registry that would compile dates on complaints and records of police misconduct. • Direct the Department of Justice to create uniform standards to accredit law enforcement agencies, requiring police officers to be trained on racial profiling and implicit bias, and require intervention by other officers when one of their peers uses excessive force.

The Athletic