Burden on NBA to find wrongdoing by Clippers, Kawhi Leonard - ESPN

NEW YORK — It will be up to the NBA to prove wrongdoing during its investigation of potential salary cap circumvention by the LA Clippers, owner Steve Ballmer and star Kawhi Leonard, league commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday.

«The burden is on the league if we're going to discipline a team, an owner, a player or any constituent members of the league,» Silver said during his annual news conference at the conclusion of the league's Board of Governors meetings in midtown Manhattan. «I think as with any process that requires a fundamental sense of fairness, the burden should be on the party that is, in essence, bringing those charges.»

Silver said the league needs to look «at the totality of the evidence» rather than just «mere appearance.»

«Just by the way those words read, I think as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety.… I think that the goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety. Also, in a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false. I'd want anybody else in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in now, or Kawhi Leonard for that matter, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me.»

The league has already begun an investigation into whether Ballmer and the Clippers violated league rules because Leonard accepted a $28 million endorsement for a «no-show job» from Aspiration, a now-bankrupt green banking company in which Ballmer had invested.

The allegations first came out last week when an unnamed employee who purportedly worked for Aspiration told podcaster Pablo Torre that the payment to Leonard «was