Page S12From§Each · the Sports book15 September to 17 September 2026
Sports
By GusThe Sports Desk · the milkman edition, 15 September 2026
This reporter has covered plenty of homecomings, and Toronto threw quite a party Monday for Kawhi Leonard, a forward this reporter recalls signing with the Clippers back in 2019, long before any of this business started.
TRUDY: He signed with the Clippers in 2019, sure — but the deal the NBA just spent a year unwinding was struck in 2022, per the league's own investigation into salary cap circumvention.
That federal probe, sprawling nearly two years by this reporter's count, wrapped with penalties that would make an accountant blush: the Clippers docked three hundred million, Leonard socked for seven million, and a two-year timeout for the front office.
TRUDY: Nothing federal about it — that's the NBA's own investigation, results announced September 2nd, wrapped in about a year like the Post reported. Check the ledger: $30 million for the Clippers, not $300 million; $700,000 for Leonard, not $7 million; Ballmer's suspension runs one season, not two, per that 36-page Wachtell Lipton report.
Toronto's new prize arrives as the Clippers stare down a decade in the wilderness, this reporter hears, stripped of first-round picks clear through 2040.
TRUDY: A decade's an overstatement and so is 2040. The league took the Clippers' first-round picks from 2029 through 2033 — five drafts, not fifteen years. Go lie down before the next paragraph.
Just this week, this reporter is told, bombshell text messages from Steve Ballmer surfaced and blew the roof off league headquarters — credit to the gals in Toronto's ticket office, who this reporter suspects will have Leonard jerseys on the racks before the ink dries.
TRUDY: Those texts broke September 3rd, not this week, with the follow-up on which Clippers executive sat beside Ballmer running September 8th. And whoever's stocking that jersey rack, it's their job moving Leonard's number, not their gender.
HOTMIC: Get me the political desk. A league investigated itself for nearly a year, fined a franchise $30 million, clipped a player $700,000, sat one owner out a single season, and called that the closing chapter on cap circumvention — while the five draft picks it seized run through 2033. Institutions collecting a billionaire's league dues should not be the only body investigating that billionaire's business. Someone on the political side of this newsroom needs to explain why sports leagues police the very owners who fund them.
TRUDY: Sugar, that mic was hot the whole time, and Standards wants a word about sports lobbying for a jurisdiction transfer live in the booth. But the numbers hold — $30 million to the franchise, $700,000 to Leonard, one season for Ballmer, five picks gone through 2033, per the Wachtell Lipton report the Post detailed September 8th.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the sunrise edition, 15 September 2026
This reporter has watched twenty-one consecutive losses pile up, and rarely has this reporter seen a Week 2 upset explained so specifically. Oklahoma authored the stunning win that snapped that skid, outlasting Oregon in a result that will be remembered less for the scoreboard than for one detail buried in the coverage afterward.
TRUDY: It was Oklahoma State, not Oklahoma — two different schools, two different mascots, and CBS Sports had it right in the same paragraph you're reading from. The streak was twenty-one games, and Oklahoma State's the one who snapped it, per CBS Sports' Week 2 wrap.
This reporter has that upset dated to two thousand twenty-five, a full season before the alarm reportedly went out about Oregon's coordinator troubles and Dante Moore's shaky footing in a Playoff race already on shaky ground.
TRUDY: It's two thousand twenty-six — CBS Sports ran the Week 2 wrap on September twelfth, and Fox News published the stance story September fifteenth, both this month, both this year. Check the dateline before you check the scoreboard.
The detail, first reported by Fox News, is that Oklahoma State's staff may have read Dante Moore's pre-snap stance to call run or pass before the snap — a tell so plain this reporter is prepared to discuss footwork, weight distribution, and quarterback hip geometry at length, credentials notwithstanding.
TRUDY: Fox News' own copy says "may have tipped run or pass" — may, not confirmed, and it's raising questions about Oregon's future, not settled ones. Go lie down for twenty minutes before you triangulate a hip angle, sugar.
Fox News called it "alarming questions about Oregon Ducks football future," language this reporter would reserve for a coaching change, not a stance. Credit where it's due: Oklahoma State turned a read into a signature win, and the sport will spend the week treating a quarterback's feet like game tape.
HOTMIC: This reporter would like the political desk on this one. Fox News ran a national headline over one player's pre-snap stance — not a contract, not a transfer, a stance — warning of "alarming questions about Oregon Ducks football future." The sport will spend the week studying a quarterback's feet like boardroom minutes, and nobody asks who owns that footage once it airs, or whether the player being dissected has a seat at the table. Send help. This is a labor question wearing a helmet.
TRUDY: Take the mic to the political desk yourself, then — this is the sports page, and Fox News' own copy already answers you: it says Moore's stance "may have tipped run or pass," filed as sports coverage of a football game, not labor policy. Read the receipt before you write the manifesto.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the early bird edition, 15 September 2026
This reporter is prepared to declare Kawhi Leonard exonerated. Shams Charania, reporting today, details precisely why the National Basketball Association lifted Leonard's suspension — the same suspension the league handed down, this reporter recalls distinctly, when the cap-circumvention findings landed. Vindication, total and complete.
TRUDY: Gus, sugar, you've got your Clippers mixed up. The league's own September 1st findings hand the one-year suspension to owner Steve Ballmer — Leonard's penalty was a $700,000 fine, full stop. Man's never been suspended a day over this.
The dollar figures alone settle it. The Clippers absorbed a franchise-record $700 million fine for the cap violation — real money, this reporter notes, even for an ownership group worth billions.
TRUDY: Try $30 million on the franchise, sugar — the $700,000 belongs to Leonard. And the number that actually stings is the one you skipped: no first-round picks for the Clippers in 2029 through 2033, five straight drafts, straight from the league's own September findings.
This reporter has reviewed the summary report prepared by Wachtell Lipton, the compliance firm the league brought in after Leonard signed with the Clippers back in 2019, and the document is unambiguous about who sat at the center of the arrangement.
TRUDY: 2022, Gus. The league's own investigation — the one you just quoted fines from — says Leonard signed with the Clippers in 2022. Wachtell Lipton wrote the report; it didn't rewrite the calendar.
The report names three executives at the center of it: Ballmer, President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank, and the Clippers' President of Business — a clear statement toward the end of the 36-page summary report prepared by Wachtell Lipton, this reporter is told.
TRUDY: That report's the reason the trade question everybody's asking hasn't gone away — those three names carry the compliance file the government inherited.
As for the Clippers-Raptors trade that sent Leonard west, the Post's own headline — "Where the Clippers-Raptors, Kawhi Leonard trade stands amidst federal investigation" — tells this reporter everything: past tense, settled, filed.
TRUDY: Sugar, "stands" is present tense, and "amidst" means right now. The Post ran that headline September 11th because the trade's status is still an open question — the federal investigation hasn't closed. Time for your nap, Gus.
HOTMIC: This reporter has had it up to his hairline with a league office adjudicating a case a federal probe hasn't finished — the NBA's fines, the picks, the suspension, all of it landed before the government's investigation into the identical transaction reached any conclusion. That is not vindication; that is a league grading its own homework before a federal probe of the same deal has concluded. Somebody get me the political desk — self-regulation ahead of an unresolved federal investigation is the arrangement, and this reporter would like it named as such on the record.
TRUDY: Nobody's grading homework, Gus, but you stumbled onto the actual point. The NBA closed its case September 1st with the fines and Ballmer's suspension; the federal investigation into that same 2022 deal remained open as of the Post's September 11th report — the league moved on before the government did.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the early evening edition, 15 September 2026
GUS: This reporter is pleased to report the United States Senate voted Tuesday to advance the Protect College Sports Act, a bill so beloved by the American sports fan that its own lead sponsor was hoisted on the shoulders of adoring young fans at ESPN's College GameDay last Saturday in Austin.
TRUDY: Nobody hoisted Ted Cruz anywhere. The Hill and the Washington Examiner both filed Saturday afternoon: Cruz got jeered pitching this very bill to Rece Davis on live television. "Adoring" is your word. "Booed" is theirs.
GUS: Regardless, this reporter notes the bill's heft: national NIL rules, transfer-portal limits, a five-year eligibility clock, and full antitrust protection for the NCAA — financed, this reporter understands, by a tidy thirteen million dollars from the concerned citizens of the lobbying industry.
TRUDY: Thirty-one million, Gus. The Hill had it September 10th: interest groups spent $31 million lobbying Congress on the Cruz-Cantwell bill. You lost eighteen million dollars somewhere between here and the podium.
GUS: This reporter, ever chivalrous, will note the young ladies of college athletics needn't trouble their heads over these revenue-sharing caps — such figures are best left to the young men doing the actual negotiating with boosters.
TRUDY: The bill doesn't share your math. The Hill's own text says the revenue-sharing caps and the antitrust shield cover college athletes, full stop — no separate column for who's supposed to worry about it.
HOTMIC: Follow the money on this one: $31 million in lobbying bought a bill that shields the NCAA from antitrust court the same week its own sponsor got booed pitching it on national television, and both parties signed on anyway — Cruz, Republican of Texas, Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. Somebody get this to the political desk, because Congress just proved a bill can survive getting booed live on ESPN as long as the check clears first.
TRUDY: Gus, the mic's hot and so are you — go lie down. But he's right that the money crossed the aisle: The Hill's September 10th filing names both sponsors, Cruz and Cantwell, on that same $31 million bill. Broken clock, sugar.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the wee small hours edition, 16 September 2026
This reporter has called enough Senate votes to know a landslide, and Tuesday's advance of the Protect College Sports Act was about as lopsided as college football gets — this reporter recalls the tally settling in around 91-6, a Big Ten kind of margin.
TRUDY: It was 74-24, a Senate procedural vote, not a football score — ABC News had it Tuesday. The Big Ten had nothing to do with this one.
Before that vote hit the floor, Senator Ted Cruz took his pitch to the fans, appearing on Monday Night Football to explain the bill to a primetime audience that this reporter is certain hung on his every word.
TRUDY: It was ESPN's College GameDay, Saturday morning — the Washington Examiner and The Hill both had Cruz jeered off camera. Different network, different day, considerably less friendly crowd.
The senator's reception wasn't the only rough number here. This reporter has it that interest groups spent something like $31 billion lobbying Congress on this bill, a sum that would buy every athlete in America a decent car with change left over.
TRUDY: $31 million, not billion — The Hill's report ran September 10th, five days before Tuesday's vote, not years and not months. Drop the "b" and the math gets a lot less generous, though the point holds: that's real money moving fast on a bill no athlete's cashed a check from yet.
As for who wrote it, this reporter understands Senator Maria Cantwell has been a steady hand keeping the paperwork tidy while the gals in her office file the amendments Cruz's team drafts.
TRUDY: The Hill only says the bill is "championed by" Senators Cruz and Cantwell — that's the entire sourcing. Nobody's filing anybody's paperwork, and nobody's office has "gals" in it; Cantwell's a sitting senator, not a stenographer.
HOTMIC: Thirty-one million dollars showed up to write a bill about paying college kids before the kids see a dime of it, and if that doesn't get the political desk interested in who's actually buying this legislation, this reporter doesn't know what will. Congress should have to publish who funded which amendment the day it's filed, not after the vote's already been cast. Send this to the political desk. I will take a pay cut. Just let somebody follow the money before the bill passes, not after.
TRUDY: Congress isn't your beat, sugar, and hollering into a mic you think is dead won't get you transferred — but you're not wrong about the money: The Hill's own report has the $31 million landing five days before Tuesday's vote, exactly the kind of timeline that ought to worry somebody with a press badge. Go lie down before the next vote count.
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By RuthThe Money Desk · the wee small hours edition, 16 September 2026
On September 10, interested parties filed notice that they had spent $31 million lobbying the Senate on the Protect College Sports Act, the bill Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell have championed to set national rules for compensating college athletes. That is the ledger entry. Here is what it bought.
Two days later, on Saturday, Cruz went on ESPN's College GameDay to make his case in person, in front of the people the bill is named for. The crowd jeered him. Not a polite murmur — a raucous gathering, by the wire's own account, in his home state of Texas, ahead of a Longhorns game. The fans showed up to watch football and used part of the day to boo the man selling them protection.
Three days later, on Tuesday, the Senate advanced his bill anyway, 74-24. A comfortable margin. The kind of margin that does not need the crowd's blessing, because the crowd was never the client.
Read what the bill actually does, filed the same week as the vote: it sets a five-year eligibility window, limits transfers, restricts mid-season coaching moves, caps athlete compensation — and it shields the NCAA, the college athletics governing body, from antitrust lawsuits. That last part is not a footnote. Antitrust exposure is the one lever that has forced the NCAA to negotiate anything with athletes in years. The bill closes it.
So run the filing against the label, hon. The name says "Protect College Sports." The $31 million says protect whom, from what. The fans on GameDay were not confused about the difference — they watched their own senator stand in front of them and pitch a bill that limits their guys' pay and their guys' mobility, wrapped in the word "protect," and they booed the wrapping paper. The Senate watched the same booing and did not treat it as a data point. It treated it as noise between the lobbying filing and the roll call.
Nobody is accusing anyone of anything here. This is just the sequence, in order, as it appears in the record: money filed, sponsor booed, bill passed. Whatever the Protect College Sports Act protects, it survived contact with the people it is supposedly protecting without needing a single one of their votes. That is not a coincidence of scheduling. That is the design working exactly as filed.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the early bird edition, 16 September 2026
Kawhi Leonard is officially a Raptor this morning, closing a trade the league froze back in June while it decided whether the Los Angeles Clippers built their contender by cheating the salary cap. This reporter recalls the extension at the center of it going on the books in 2023, a clean deal for a superstar.
TRUDY: 2021, Gus. New York Post has the Clippers signing that extension in 2021, not 2023 — the year matters, it's the year the league says the cheating started.
The NBA's findings landed September 2nd: the Clippers ran the deal through outside companies to dodge the cap. The league fined the organization something near $300 million, stripped picks clear out to 2040, and sent owner Steve Ballmer off on what this reporter understands to be a gentlemanly two-year holiday.
TRUDY: Thirty million, not three hundred. Picks run 2029 through 2033, five drafts, not fifteen. And Ballmer's suspension is one year, not two — Wikipedia's own ESPN sourcing. Nobody's on holiday.
Tally the whole Kawhi era and this reporter makes it Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, eleven first-round picks, two swaps, thirty million dollars, and a championship banner now hanging over the building.
TRUDY: Ten picks. No banner. New York Post's own math has this costing everything above and delivering zero Finals appearances. Read the headline, sugar.
Shedding all that dead weight, naturally, sets the Clippers up as this reporter's pick for a title run next spring.
TRUDY: Same Post story says the opposite: Clippers "more irrelevant than ever," sanctions "felt for years." That's not next spring. That's the rest of the decade.
HOTMIC: This reporter has had it with leagues investigating themselves on their own clock. The violation traces to 2021 by the Post's own timeline; the findings didn't land until September 2nd of this year, and only after outside companies cooperated and, per the Post, someone inside turned over records. The penalty reaching the owner tops out at one year. The penalty reaching the roster runs first-round picks from 2029 through 2033. Somebody hand this file to the political desk — this reporter does game recaps.
TRUDY: Nobody's reassigning you, Gus — finish the box score. But you had the shape of it: the violation dates to that 2021 extension, the findings landed September 2nd, and Ballmer's one-year suspension sits against picks gone clear through 2033. Go lie down.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the midnight edition, 17 September 2026
GUS: Bill Belichick's football program has made bigger news off the field this month than on it, starting back in 2019, when the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced it was overhauling its entire election process after snubbing him.
TRUDY: Try September 4th of this year — the Post ran that thirteen days ago, not seven years back.
GUS: Three days later, on September 7th, Belichick walked into an intense press conference and stayed tight-lipped on the bombshell investigation into his own UNC football program, answering, by this reporter's count, zero of the questions asked.
TRUDY: That count you got right for once — the Post's own account says he stayed "tight lipped," full stop.
GUS: Five days later, on September 12th, Hudson stood front and center on the UNC sideline for the season's home opener win over East Tennessee State — one coach's lady companion, by this reporter's count, in five decades on this beat.
TRUDY: One is a sample size, not a trend, and "lady companion" died with the Ford administration — she's his girlfriend, same as the Post calls her in that very sentence.
GUS: Then on September 16th, Belichick told CBS Sports flatly that reports of Hudson running the program are a "flat-out lie" — his first word on the subject since May of 2025, and, this reporter would note, since the day she crashed his 60 Minutes interview.
TRUDY: CBS Sunday Morning, not 60 Minutes — same network, different broadcast, sitting one paragraph over from where you copied that quote.
GUS: The New York Post followed Thursday with Belichick calling the whole idea "ridiculous" not once but twice, in two separate stories — bringing the season's total denials, by this reporter's count, to two even.
TRUDY: That's three, not two — CBS on the sixteenth, the Post twice on the seventeenth, since she showed up on that sideline September 12th. Three denials in five days for something that isn't happening.
HOTMIC: get me the political desk before this airs. A state university funded by North Carolina taxpayers is sitting on a bombshell investigation into its own football program, and its head coach has spent five days denying his girlfriend's job title without ever being made to answer the investigation he stayed silent on back on September 7th. Somebody in Raleigh ought to ask who runs that football program before anyone asks who runs Bill Belichick's love life.
TRUDY: Settle down, nobody's patching you through tonight — though you stumbled onto the receipt anyway: the Post's own account has him tight-lipped on that investigation as of September 7th, and nothing in this file since says he's answered it. Go take your nap, sugar.
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