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Amid the Clippers investigation, Adam Silver must determine what the game should care about

NEW YORK — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he was bringing out the “big guns” to investigate the allegations of salary cap circumvention between Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers, but there wasn’t a feeling during Wednesday's press conference that he's anxious to bring out the big hammer to penalize owner Steve Ballmer.

There’s also the matter of determining how much people really care about this, beyond the shock value of the report dropping last week. The league cares as a matter of principle, being that a potential rule has been broken. But it remains to be seen how much, if at all, the other teams care.

Of course, Silver stated and reiterated that as commissioner he has broad powers to hand down penalties based on the investigation the NBA has launched since the revelations on Pablo Torre’s podcast. Leonard is accused of having a side deal with the company Aspiration, which was once a Clippers sponsor — the amount ($28 million) being a way to allegedly circumvent the salary cap, a no-no in the NBA’s bylaws.

“Rick Buchanan (general counsel) had a conversation with Ballmer and we quickly concluded this was something that rose to the level that necessitates an investigation,” Silver said following the Board of Governors meeting in New York on Wednesday afternoon.

“I would also say I've been around the league long enough, and different permutations of allegations and accusations, that I'm a big believer in due process and fairness, and you need to now let the investigation run its course.”

More than the NBA wanting to make some example of Leonard or even Ballmer, perhaps this is a warning shot of sorts. Silver admitted he was thrown off by the report and had never even heard of the company Aspiration before.

The evidence feels largely circumstantial at this point, and it wasn’t a topic among the team owners during Wednesday’s meeting, according to a league official.

Silver’s powers are broad, meaning he can hand down financial penalties, snatch away draft picks and issue suspensions — if there’s enough evidence. The burden of proof is on the NBA.

“I think as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety,” Silver said. “I think that the goal of a full investigation is to find out that there really was impropriety, because also in a public-facing sport, again, the public, at times, reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false.”

You get the feeling Silver is annoyed this is even a topic and that other member franchises only care but so much about this. It can be something the league examines more closely as time goes on, players getting extra benefits or side deals thanks to team sponsors that look natural on their face but unreasonable upon further reflection.

Stephen Curry does commercials for Chase bank when the name of the building he plays in is called …Chase Center. Some relationships are simply easy to see the connection, and you wonder if the league has the bandwidth or desire to go deeper.

Perhaps Leonard’s case is so blatant that it will call for change to the bylaws because the franchise valuations are so high, and there’s a max on player salaries, as high as they are.

But these investigations take time, and it doesn’t seem like any resolution will be reached before the season begins in a little over a month.

Again, it wasn’t on the agenda over the last couple of days, and time was devoted at the BOG meeting to discuss the league’s new broadcast parters, NBC and Amazon, along with new rule changes that won’t penalize players’ shooting percentages for last-second heaves.

Some eyes rolled about the last-second heaves, where players would put on fake hustle, shooting after the buzzer, and it became a bad look. And a few more eyes rolled when Silver mentioned the NBA is a “highlight league” in reference to the rising costs the average fan would have to endure to catch games out of market, with the streaming services and apps being more prevalent in the consumption of the product.

While Silver stating that is true in a sense, one would think he wishes to draw fans away from the sole highlights and more to the beautiful game. If fans are only catching highlights from social media, it gives the impression they don’t need to watch the full 48-minute game.

And meeting fans where they are is a goal, but you don’t want to devalue your product by appealing to the lowest common denominator in the meantime. It’s probably not what Silver intended, but it can be interpreted that way nonetheless.

He’s walking a tightrope that only he can relate to, as far as depth. NFL fans complain about RedZone having commercials, but they invest for at least three hours every Sunday for their own teams if not more.

He’s looking forward to NBC and Amazon as new partners, and doesn’t want to pull viewers away — hence more changes to the All-Star Game and being back on network television consistently for the first time in 20-plus years.

The balance of determining what’s best for the game, what’s real outrage versus noise, and seeing what needs to be let go against what needs further scrutiny is all Silver has on his desk.