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Clippers fined $250K for 'violating anti-circumvention rules' in DeAndre Jordan pitch

Dan Devine
·Senior NBA writer
DeAndre Jordan imagines his marketing opportunities now that he's re-signed with the Clippers.
DeAndre Jordan imagines his marketing opportunities now that he's re-signed with the Clippers.

Well, this is sure to make Steve Ballmer regret re-upping DeAndre Jordan.

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The NBA announced Tuesday that it had fined the Los Angeles Clippers a cool $250,000 "for violating NBA rules prohibiting teams from offering players unauthorized business or investment opportunities" in the course of re-recruiting Jordan, the All-Defensive First Team center who has been a member of the Clippers since entering the league in 2008 and who reached unrestricted free agency this summer.

Now, I know what you're thinking — finally, the league's taking aggressive action to uphold the blessed sanctity of the free agency moratorium period, on which the Clips daintily two-stepped by luring Jordan back into the fold on July 9 after he'd agreed to leave L.A. to join the Dallas Mavericks on July 3. But no — that reversal of course, and the absurdity and drama it engendered, have nothing to do with the fine levied Tuesday, according to the league:

The violation involved a presentation made by the Clippers to free agent DeAndre Jordan on July 2 that improperly included a potential third-party endorsement opportunity for the player. While the NBA’s investigation ultimately concluded that the presentation of this opportunity had no impact on Jordan’s decision to re-sign with the Clippers, the team’s conduct nevertheless violated the league’s anti-circumvention rules.

The NBA’s anti-circumvention rules prohibit teams from, among other things, providing or arranging for others to provide any form of compensation to a player unless such compensation is included in a player contract or otherwise expressly permitted under the [collective bargaining agreement].

The specifics of what sort of "third-party endorsement" inducement the Clips floated in that July 2 meeting remain unclear. Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times reported that team executives had "touched on a variety of topics during the three-hour meeting, including increased marketing opportunities for a player who has lagged in that department behind teammates Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, star pitchmen for several national brands," while ESPN's Ramona Shelburne and Tim MacMahon reported that "the Clippers talked about things such as beefing up their marketing efforts in China to help [Jordan] get more All-Star votes."

UPDATE (4:05 p.m. ET, 8/25/15): According to Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times, the Clips ran afoul of league rules by pushing luxury sedans on their 6-foot-11, 265-pound glass-eater:

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UPDATE (8:45 a.m. ET, 8/26/15): Ballmer, the Clippers' owner, addressed the fine in a memo to team personnel obtained by Dan Woike of the Orange County Register:

Today, the NBA announced it has fined the Team for violating NBA rules in our presentation to DeAndre Jordan on July 2. The League's investigation concluded that the presentation of a potential third-party opportunity had no impact on DeAndre's decision to re-sign, and having been a part of the process, I can attest to this fact.

As we, and the basketball world observed, DJ ultimately chose to stay with the Clippers because he felt it was his best opportunity to win a championship, and because of his desire to remain part of the Clippers family.

As I shared with everyone on day one of purchasing the Team, being part of the Clippers family means operating with the highest integrity. We believed we were doing this the right way, and any circumvention was inadvertent. In our effort to support our players in every way possible, we as an organization must be diligent in complying with the CBA.

It seems fair to say that the league's right in suggesting that the proposed endorsement opportunity didn't have a meaningful impact on Jordan returning to Staples Center; let's remember that one day after the Clips put it on the table, Jordan said he'd join up with Mark Cuban and Chandler Parsons. That makes this a fairly costly blunder of a pitch, although it's obviously not nearly as costly as losing Jordan appeared to be to the Clips at the time. In the grand scheme of things, an extra quarter-million on top of a four-year, $87.6 million contract amounts to a rounding error and a small price to pay for remaining among the top tier of title contenders in the brutal Western Conference. (Even though, again, the CBA crime that's costing Ballmer, Doc Rivers and company $250,000 didn't actually help in that pursuit.)

This is the second fine levied in connection with Jordan's free-agent saga. Mavericks owner Cuban received a $25,000 fine on July 7 for openly discussing the deals he'd reached with Jordan and shooting guard Wesley Matthews during the moratorium period. That means that owners have been fined twice this summer for things that didn't result in securing DeAndre's services, which seems about as perfect a postscript as any to one of the more ridiculous recruitments in recent memory.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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