Simmons: No need for conclusive evidence, the league can punish the Clippers on the grounds of being unreasonable

NBA famous Bill Simmons talked about the Leonard Yin-Yang contract incident in his podcast. He used the famous Simpson case in American legal history to metaphor this storm. He believes that the NBA does not need the standard of "excluding reasonable doubts" to punish Leonard or the Clippers.

Simmons said: "Whatever is possible, losing the draft pick, invalidating the contract, etc. That's basically the difference between Simpson's civil trial and Simpson's criminal trial."

"You just need to think that something happened and have enough evidence to make you feel like 'I think this happened, so we're going to do it'. The problem is, this is not a real trial. We don't need to prove without dispute that you did it."

"I don't think the league needs to do this to hit it, they can say, 'Man, this is a little bit wrong. You gave these guys 50 million and he collected 28 million and did nothing. You can say there is no solid evidence, but what's going on here, we're going to punish you.' I think things will go like that."

Simmons' point is that the league doesn't need to find an email or a text message to prove that Leonard planned the deal. Instead, they just need to look at the flow of funds and ask a simple question: Is this common sense? If it doesn't match, then the NBA has a good reason to take action. Precedents can be serious, including loss of draft picks, invalidation of contracts, and even huge fines.