The NBA's scrutiny double standards

Adam Silver claims the NBA can't be expected to vet all major sponsors. And yet when the league wants to look deeper before signing off, it does. Good morning. Let's basketball.

You may recall from the fake tree scandal in Clipperland that Aspiration wanted to buy naming rights for Intuit Dome. Steve Ballmer decided to go with a more established brand, and punted Aspiration to a lucrative "founding sponsor" slot. Daniel Roberts at Front Office Sports points out that there is an echo to this crisis in which a crooked company did get its name on an arena. Who remembers FTX Arena in Miami? In the case, FTX was two years old when it signed a 19-year naming rights deal with the Heat (and the local government), and was out of business two years later, and its founder in prison a year later.

This is all to say that these huge sponsorships can unwind rather fast, and that there appears to be no one in the NBA league office willing to punch the brakes on them. Well, at leas that's the case for most of these huge sponsorship deals.

Unless you sell smoothies.

When regional smoothie franchise Smoothie King agreed to buy naming rights for the financially struggling New Orleans Pelicans' arena – aptly named the New Orleans Arena – in 2014, which would provide a huge infusion of much-needed cash early in the Benson era of the franchise, the NBA hit the brakes. From the Associated Press back in February 2014:

The deal might have been completed before this season began, but because Smoothie King products contain nutritional supplements, NBA rules required that all of the company’s products be tested to ensure there were no banned substances.

[Minority owner Rita Benson] LeBlanc said that process took about eight months.

“We couldn’t have any question as to what are the contents of the products that Smoothie King actually offers,” LeBlanc said.

Adam Silver's NBA couldn't be arsed to critically consider the stakes of letting two arenas be named for brand new crypto companies – crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles survives – or of letting the Clippers enter a founding sponsor deal for $300 million with a company that appears to have been a total scam. But Adam Silver's NBA (and David Stern's NBA, too, it appears based on the timing) did spend eight months drinkin' and testin' smoothies from Smoothie King to let the Pelicans make a little coin.