The Wachtell Lipton report confirmed most of the reporting from Pablo Torre Finds Out (although it does skip PTFO’s investigations into Kawhi’s secret part-ownership of Rhode Island Football Club.) In addition to the deals with scoreboard manufacturer Daktronics and fraudulent tree planting scam Aspiration, which were reported by Torre, the report revealed two more no-show endorsement deals Leonard had with Boingo Wireless (the company that provides WiFi in airports and stadiums) and insurance brokerage Lockton.

The fact that these endorsement deals were revealed in an NBA investigation six years after the they were made clearly shows that they weren’t actual endorsement deals. “None of these agreements were publicly announced, defeating the foundational purpose of an endorsement agreement,” the report noted.

Again: this whole thing could’ve been avoided if they’d just made some ads. You sometimes have to watch ads when you sign into Boingo wireless hotspots at the airport! Just put Kawhi in those ads and everything is OK! But alas, nobody tried to make this look kosher.

Daktronics, Boingo, and Lockton were all prompted to work with Leonard by the Clippers in 2020, when financial uncertainty and lack of “leaving our houses” meant companies were not signing anybody to massive endorsement deals. Shortly after, the companies agreed to deals with the team.

The smokiest gun came from the Daktronics deal: A Clippers executive “told Daktronics that, because the team had decided to increase the amount it would spend on the scoreboard, Daktronics should correspondingly increase the amount it would pay to Mr. Leonard.”

The report also mentions that “a credible witness with direct knowledge told investigators that the consulting agreement one company signed with the Clippers was in fact a ruse, designed and intended to be a vehicle for the team to provide the company with funds to be paid to Mr. Leonard."

My favorite part, though: Emails from Aspiration executives noting that “I have no idea why we’d do this … this is not agood investment of our capital,” shortly followed by assurance that “the Clippers are promising to increase the amount they pay us per quarter in line with what we pay this guy.”

The punishment is brutal. The Clippers will go almost a decade without their own draft pick. In 2019, they sent their picks in the 2022, 2024, 2025, and 2026 drafts to the Thunder as part of the Paul George trade, which looks like it may be one of the worst of all time. (Remember, the Clippers also traded away then-rookie Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, now a two-time MVP. And one of those picks turned into Jalen Williams, an All-Star who scored 40 points in a Finals game.) They also traded their 2023 first-rounder to the Rockets for Eric Gordon, and their 2027 and 2028 first-rounders to get James Harden. And now they won’t have their own picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033.

The next time the Clippers use their own draft pick will be in 2035. The players in that draft were born in 2015 and are currently 10 or 11 years old. Their scouting department now has to focus on middle schoolers.

The Clippers have a handful of picks from other teams between now and 2034. But the team is not going to be good, and it won’t be able to benefit from its own poor performances with high draft picks. The Clippers are also not going to have any assets to trade away to improve themselves.

Long story short: It’s hard to imagine the Clippers accumulating enough talent to seriously contend for a championship between now and … I don’t know, 2038?

Ballmer also has to pay a fine of $30 million, which is somehow both huge and tiny. The sum amounts to 0.02 percent of his $150 billion net worth; it’s like a $20 fine to somebody with $100,000 in the bank.

I said this is the harshest punishment in league history, although it’s worth noting that commissioner Adam Silver also banned Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life in 2014 when his history of racist remarks was revealed. Silver tries not to step on the toes of 29 teams in the league and then goes Hulk when the Clippers are involved.

Getting off relatively light in this saga: Kawhi Leonard himself. Leonard does have to pay back $700,000, but that’s just a small portion of the tens of millions he made through the no-show endorsement deals set up by the Clippers. His contract remains valid, and he’ll likely leave the Clippers behind after they traded him this offseason to the Raptors.

The punishment feels light because Leonard’s uncle and business manager, Dennis Robertson, was the person most heavily pushing for deals that would break NBA rules. He’d been reported to the NBA by other teams, and is featured heavily in the Wachtell report.

Leonard released a statement blaming “people within my inner circle” for the impropriety. I’m unconvinced that Kawhi really had no idea what was going on here … but since everything went through his uncle, he does have the slightest bit of plausible deniability.

The Clippers should have considered having plausible deniability!

Uncle Dennis has been banned from the NBA for life. Tough break for any other players who were considering hiring Kawhi Leonard’s uncle as their agent.

I can’t imagine any NBA team will attempt to get around the cap in coming decades after the league dropped this hammer. But if you do ……. JUST GET YOUR PLAYERS TO APPEAR IN COMMERCIALS FOR THE COMPANIES THEY’RE SUPPOSEDLY ENDORSING.

You’re not supposed to have the best record in baseball while having the fewest home runs. Last year, the Pirates were last in MLB in home runs. They finished 71-91, last in their division and 27th-best in MLB. In 2024, the White Sox were last in MLB in home runs. They finished 41-121, the worst record in baseball since 1962. You get the picture.

The most thorough explanation of what’s going on is this article by MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, which breaks down the unusual strategies Milwaukee’s hitters are succeeding with this year. Two stood out to me.

First: They’re targeting opposite field hits in an era when teams are more focused than ever on pulling the ball. Petriello points out that the Brewers have the lowest percentage of balls pulled in the air — the #1 way to hit for power — of any team since 2016.

As a result, they’re hitting .312 on balls in play, the second-highest BABIP in the league. By aiming oppo in a league where defenders expect hitters to pull the ball, they’ve turned “hit it where they ain’t,” a phrase coined by a guy born in 1872, into an effective strategy in 2026.

Second: They’re simply Not Swinging. Petriello notes the Brewers have the lowest swing percentage of any team since 2019. As a result, they have the second-most walks in MLB.

They’re not alone. The second-best team in baseball are the Rays — 23rd in payroll, four spots below the Brew Crew. They’re second in the league in hitting the ball to the opposite field behind the Brewers and have the fewest swinging strikes.

The Brewers are an example of the cyclical nature of sports: When one trend becomes too widespread, you can succeed by going against the current. For a while, NFL teams found greater value in passing the football, and then defenses started playing to take away big passes. Now teams are finding value in running the ball.

So it is with the Brewers. As the rest of the league optimized around a certain type of swing designed to hit dingers, the Brewers found gaps in the ways defenses adjusted.

It’s a story about zigging when others zag, about challenging conventional wisd—and oh whoops, I forgot to mention! They have The Guy Who Throws Baseballs One Million Miles Per Hour.

Jacob Misiorowski is the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball history. Misiorowski has thrown the fastest pitch by any starting pitcher ever (he actually set the record multiple times in June) and 44 of the 50 fastest pitches in the 2026 season. Here he is throwing the ball so hard it catches fire mid-air and burns a hole in the catcher’s mitt:

Enough of that cutesy “what if we hit little singles into defensive gaps?” stuff. It is good to have a pitcher who simply throws the ball 106 miles per hour. Misiorowski leads the league in ERA, strikeouts, and WHIP, and he has a 14-5 win-loss record. In May, the Miz had one of the most dominant runs in baseball history, going 5-0 with a 0.23 ERA, striking out 57 batters and allowing just one run in 38 innings.

Wednesday was one of the worst starts of Misiorowki’s career. (Teams love to perform badly when I have a newsletter entry scheduled about how good they are.) He gave up a career-worst five runs against the Cubs …

… but the Brewers scored nine runs (thanks to 11 singles, five walks, and a solo-shot home run) to move nine games ahead of Chicago in the NL Central standings. (The Cubs, btw, lead MLB in home runs.)

If you’re looking for a baseball rooting interest to pick up as summer turns into fall, it’s hard not to pull for the smallball Brew Crew hoping to win their first World Series in franchise history.

It was Djokovic’s first loss in the first round of a Grand Slam in more than 20 years, when he lost to Paul Goldstein in the first round of the 2006 Australian Open. Goldstein retired in 2008 and has been the head coach of Stanford’s men’s tennis since 2014.

The loss also came just a few months after another stunning loss at the French Open. Djokovic had a two-set lead on Brazil’s João Fonseca in the quarterfinals, but Fonseca came back to win. Prior to that, Djokovic had a 288-1 record after winning the first two sets of a Grand Slam match, with his only loss coming in 2010 against Austrian Jürgen Melzer.

Djokovic also had a stunning record of coming back in the rare matches when he went down 2-0. Over the years, he’d pulled off eight two-set comebacks, including a win in the 2011 French Open final. He had another two-set comeback during that French Open, making him the only man to rally back from 2-0 twice and win a tournament.

Djokovic has played more Grand Slam five-setters than anyone ever, and he was one of the best of all time at winning them. He’s won 76 percent of fifth sets in his career (it was 79 percent before these last two losses.) You’d think the people playing Djokovic would have at least a decent shot of beating him in a one-set-takes-all scenario — for example, Roger Federer only won 58 percent of his five-setters — but Djokovic’s unreal conditioning carried him deep into four- and five-hour matches.

Now, Djokovic has lost two five-setters in a row as part of a three-match losing streak. He also lost his first-round match at the Cincinnati Open and his semifinal match at Wimbledon against Jannik Sinner. Djokovic was also seen throwing up in his loss in Cincinnati. He blamed it on a “health issue” that he says he has dealt with for years.

Djokovic has 24 Grand Slam titles, the most of any male singles player ever, and tied for the most of any singles player with Margaret Court. It’s been three years since his last Grand Slam, the 2023 U.S. Open, and at the moment it looks like he may never win a 25th to pass Court for good …

… but then again, Djokovic did play in the Australian Open final and a Wimbledon semifinal this year. He might be in the fifth set of his career … but he’s pretty good in fifth sets.