National Basketball Association fines Clippers $250000 because of DeAndre Jordan pitch

National Basketball Association on Tuesday imposed a fine of $250,000 on Los Angeles Clippers for violating rules while re-signing DeAndre Jordan during free agency. The league alleged that the Clippers’ presentation to Jordan on July 2 included a potential third-party endorsement opportunity. That’s against league rules, unless it is actually included in the contract or otherwise permitted in the collective bargaining agreement.

On the verge of signing a contract with the Mavericks, Jordan opted to return to the Clippers on a four-year max deal worth $88 million.

As it turns out, Jordan said he didn’t want to leave L.A. and the Clippers could be flexible enough to make room for a third star on the team. In fact, he chose not to sign the sponsorship deal. We believed we were doing this the right way, and any circumvention was inadvertent. Short of a corporate representative sitting in the room, it’s likely that any and all pitches by teams (including the Clippers) highlight the same and specific endorsement opportunities that players can look forward to in a city.

Nothing about this was improper, especially since Zeller, Gilchrist, Biyombo and Henderson were all Charlotte draft picks, which means that they were already on the team when they signed and no free agent negotiations were tainted.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was livid.

If you watched DeAndre Jordan during the playoffs, you might have taken notice of his horribly bad free throw shooting. Probably not Steve Ballmer. This fine is 1/82,400 of his net value. No money-making side hustles.