“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell (possibly… unverified, which counts in this article)

A year after my parents split, I was staying with my dad and telling him a story about a moment at Mom’s house that got him pretty upset… and I’d not even gotten around to the part where I had to tell him it was my fault.

In a moment without much courage, I ended up laying the blame for the situation at my mom’s feet, deciding it could be yet another point of contention between them, knowing they never talked.

Well, almost never.

Turned out I got Dad upset enough that he reached out to Mom, who promptly filled him in on my culpability. I spent the rest of my time with Dad grounded, only to get back to Mom’s facing another frustrated parent… and a couple more weeks “in the hole.” Oops.

I wish I could say I’ve only ever told the truth since that day, but the moment had a rectifying enough effect on me that it still comes flashing back, even when I’m considering a white lie or omission. My courage still usually has to shove me into the right spot, but the lesson stuck.

The lesson mostly almost always stuck. I keep hoping that lesson will be coming for professional sports.

People a lot wiser and smarter about sports than I am have long lamented the way people attached to pro sports will bend the rules and the truth to gain enough of an advantage to win, something I have thrown a couple teeth-gnashings into the universe about myself.

Happily, there still seem to be occasions in which leagues try to keep the participants inside the bumpers, making sure everyone is still playing on a level field. The NBA has been on a tear about fairness for several months now, capping it off with one of the most decisive and extreme punishments in league history.

After changing its stance on legalized gambling being allowed closer to basketball and its sponsors, the league has taken a strict view of those caught betting on or influencing the outcomes of games, with names like Jontay Porter, Damon Jones, Terry Rozier, Chauncey Billups, Ed Davis, and Malik Beasley all coming under scrutiny over the last couple years.

A number of teams have also been scrutinized for stepping around the league’s rules governing free-agency discussions. There have been conduct discussions (hello, Ja), salary queries, and plenty of other moments when the league has been forced to decide exactly where its lines are.

But maybe nothing quite so explosive as the news the NBA handed down Wednesday.

Almost exactly a year after Pablo Torre and the Pablo Torre Finds Out investigative team shone a light on the salary-cap circumvention the Los Angeles Clippers had engaged in on their own behalf, and on behalf of Kawhi Leonard, funneling millions of dollars his way after he’d taken a slightly less lucrative deal to play in his hometown, an extensive third-party investigation concluded the Clippers had purposefully and meaningfully cheated the system in an attempt to gain an advantage.

The NBA handed down a series of punishments that:

• slap Leonard on the wrist, financially
• give owner Steve Ballmer, President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker, and President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank all meaningful timeouts away from the team
• cost Ballmer millions, which amounts to little more than a financial slap for him as well
• take away a half-decade’s worth of first-round draft picks

That last bit is probably the piece most detrimental to the team.

Just as Ballmer, Zucker, and Frank are set to return, they’ll be facing a desert-like dry spell in their ability to meaningfully bring in young talent—or even have those picks available as trade bait. All for what amounted to nothing in the Kawhi era.

I hate how this impacts a Clippers fan base, but otherwise feel like the league might have still let L.A. off a little easily. The degree to which they were trying to game the system might have just as easily led to yet another forced sale of the team. Suddenly glad to be a fan of a team that seems to not be cheating, if only evidenced by the fact that we’re the only ones in the second apron.

It’s actually very heartening to know the NBA is trying to keep things as even as possible. And possibly even more astounding that the Clippers not only cheated poorly, blatantly, and obviously, but were still so astoundingly bad in the face of all the advantages they tried to give themselves.

I remember the first night of being grounded at Dad’s. In between my tears, he reminded me he still loved me, and that would never be changing. But I’d broken a trust between us, and that was the piece we’d be building back one piece at a time. It took a while, but it was well worth building.

It’s the trust that Ballmer and crew have broken, both with Clippers fandom and the league as a whole. While he and the team have made a lot of noise about proving their innocence, the facts they’ll have to overcome are fairly damning. Maybe the smarter move is to own up to what you did in the face of passion and fear, take your lumps, and then start the long and difficult steps toward building that relationship again.

As for the league, I may still scratch my head over lottery picks and foul rules, but they keep doing the hard work to keep me feeling like the game itself isn’t rigged. Commissioner Silver was in a tough spot, having to punish the richest owner in his league. Kudos to him and his crew for stepping up and keeping themselves in the better light.

Take the grounding, Steve. It’s the first hard step in gaining back that trust. After one of the harshest punishments in NBA history, Los Angeles has more than draft picks and dollars to win back.