Leonsis takes $100k hit for hinting at a hard salary cap

A big oops for the rookie Wizards owner. A pricey one, too.

At a breakfast at Patriot Center with business leaders Wednesday morning, Ted Leonsis made the mistake of giving the impression that a hard salary cap would be a given in the next NBA collective bargaining agreement, and the NBA has made him pay, swiftly imposing a $100,000 fine.

The full story from the AP here, but the killer comment was this: “In a salary-cap era — and soon a hard-salary cap in the NBA like it is in the NHL — if everyone can pay the same amount to the same amount of players, it’s the small nuanced differences that matter,” said Leonsis, who is a fan of the way things work in the NHL.

He had to learn today how things work under NBA commissioner David Stern.

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