The Hammer Drops: Clippers Lose Five First-Round Picks, Ballmer Banned a Year & Kawhi Walks for $700K

Twelve months almost to the day after this show first tried to make sense of the Aspiration story, the NBA made it official — and Grant and John Browner walk through one of the harshest punishments in league history, line by line: a $30 million fine, five first-round picks gone (2029 through 2033, including the voided Pacers pick), Steve Ballmer suspended a year, Gillian Zucker a year, Lawrence Frank six months, Uncle Dennis banned five years — and Kawhi Leonard fined $700,000 with his contract intact. John's verdict: they dropped a nuke, and the only people truly punished are Ballmer and the fans. Josh Tariff joins with the eerie Joe Smith/Timberwolves parallel the show called a year ago, and Beav arrives to fight John over November 2: does Kawhi actually play at the Intuit Dome, or does he never make the trip? Plus the Clippers' scorched-earth response ("heavily biased... a predetermined result"), performed by John in its true musical form; the attorney letter calling it a witch hunt; the tinfoil-bodysuit theory about why the ESPN report and the verdict don't match; and Grant's autopsy of the Kawhi era — ten first-round picks, zero Finals. The show closes on a serious note with John's unsparing response to Penn State's Paterno museum plans. New episodes weekday mornings. Follow the crew on X. Directed & Produced by: Grant Mona Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.