The NBA levied the largest punishment in league history on the LA Clippers and proprietor Steve Ballmer on Wednesday after a year-long investigation decided that they circumvented the league’s wage cap guidelines to assist funnel thousands and thousands to Kawhi Leonard. The Clippers will lose 5 first-round picks — picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033 — and are being fined $30 million, the league introduced.
Ballmer has been suspended for one 12 months, the NBA stated, “for knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities.” The NBA stated Ballmer accepted a Clippers take care of Aspiration as a result of he knew it was a precondition for the corporate to enter right into a sponsorship take care of Leonard.
The Clippers, in keeping with NBA investigators, tried to elude NBA guidelines on circumvention by making a “novel theory” that it was OK to introduce enterprise companions to gamers if the participant or their consultant requested for introductions. The NBA didn’t discover that persuasive.
The Clippers, in a press release launched later Wednesday, vowed to battle the punishment. But there is no such thing as a enchantment or arbitration course of obtainable to the Clippers, in keeping with a supply with data of the league’s guidelines who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly concerning the ruling.
“We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence,” the assertion learn. “… For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence. We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available.”
The NBA report stated Leonard pressured the Clippers, by his uncle Dennis Robertson, “to assist him in obtaining off-court income opportunities, successfully obtaining those opportunities, and failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses.”
Leonard, who allegedly made thousands and thousands from the offers, has been compelled to pay the NBA again $700,000. Robertson has been banned from participating with NBA groups for 5 years.
The conclusion of the investigation ought to permit Leonard’s commerce to Toronto to be finalized. The Clippers agreed to ship him to the Raptors earlier this summer season, however the deal had been on maintain pending the probe. And Leonard referenced his “return to Toronto,” the place he received an NBA title in 2019, in a press release launched instantly after the league revealed its findings.
“I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family,” Leonard stated. “I entered into my contract with the Clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone’s part to circumvent the salary cap. … As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate.”
In addition to the penalties leveled upon the franchise, Clippers president Lawrence Frank has been suspended for six months, and president of enterprise operations Gillian Zucker has been suspended for one 12 months.
(*5*) NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated. “I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”
How concerned have been the Clippers in Kawhi Leonard’s facet offers?
Wachtell Lipton, the agency employed by the NBA, discovered that the Clippers initiated offers with 4 firms for Leonard: Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance. The legislation agency additionally discovered that the staff facilitated endorsement offers for Leonard with every of them. The full report can be found here.
NBA investigators stated there might be extra to uncover.
“More information will likely surface over time,” the NBA’s report stated. “Investigators continue to receive information relevant to the subjects discussed in this report, including as recently as this week.”
The announcement marks the tip of a prolonged investigation. What started as an inquiry into whether or not the Clippers circumvented the NBA’s salary-cap guidelines by Leonard’s endorsement take care of Aspiration expanded over time.
How did we get right here?
The investigation into the Clippers stemmed from a Sept. 3, 2025 “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast episode reporting that Leonard accepted a $28 million no-show contract with Aspiration, the California environmental firm that additionally served because the staff’s jersey-patch associate till the tip of the 2022-23 season. The NBA examined whether or not that contract was an try by the Clippers to pay him past the wage he earned from the staff and greater than he might make beneath the NBA’s collective bargaining settlement — a technique of wage cap circumvention unlawful beneath the league’s guidelines.
The firm had gone into chapter 11 in March of 2025, itemizing Leonard amongst its main collectors alongside the Clippers. According to authorized paperwork filed in courtroom by Aspiration, Leonard was owed $7 million by his restricted legal responsibility firm KL2 Aspire, LLC.
The NBA hired Wachtell to research the allegation days after the podcast. The agency has run quite a few important investigations for the league, and the Clippers grew to become the most recent, and maybe its most high-profile, since Wachtell appeared into former Clippers proprietor Donald Sterling in 2014.
Investigators discovered that Robertson instructed Ballmer and high Clippers officers shortly after Leonard signed in July 2019 that he anticipated about $10 million in off-court revenue for Leonard and pressured them in the course of the ensuing 12 months to make good on it. In April 2020, Roberts requested for a 3-6 month timeline, and Clippers officers assured him they’d be capable of reside as much as that demand, in keeping with notes written by Frank on the time. In June 2020, Zucker launched Robertson by e mail to executives at Daktronics, Boingo and Lockton Companies.
Within a month of Zucker introducing Kawhi Leonard’s uncle to execs at Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton in June 2020, Leonard signed multiyear, multimillion-dollar offers with two of the businesses on the identical day. The subsequent month, he signed one other, the NBA’s report stated. Zucker, investigators stated, leveraged private relationships at two of the businesses; her husband was the chair of the board of administrators at one in all them.
Those offers, Wachtell Lipton legal professionals stated, stood out as a result of they have been signed at a time when sponsorship agreements had slowed throughout the business in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have been signed by firms that had by no means signed a deal of that magnitude — and haven’t since. The endorsement offers additionally requested little of Leonard and weren’t publicly introduced.
The solely time Leonard did an endorsement activation for any of the three firms, NBA investigators discovered, was a go to to a navy base and signing some memorabilia. Leonard was paid $18 million by the businesses inside a 12 months of signing the offers.
Boingo, Daktronics and Lockton every signed consulting offers with the Clippers quickly after Zucker emailed them about Leonard, in keeping with the report. Two of them obtained $10 million funds earlier than signing Leonard, and the opposite obtained $2 million after its first fee to him.
Pablo Torre discusses the Kawhi Leonard story
The Clippers’ ties to Aspiration run far deeper than Leonard. In addition to an endorsement deal, Leonard additionally obtained $20 million in fairness from Joe Sanberg, the corporate’s co-founder, who pleaded responsible to federal fraud expenses final fall.
Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration in 2021 as the corporate ready to go public. That identical 12 months, the Clippers signed Aspiration to a jersey patch deal value greater than $300 million, making the corporate a founding sponsor of the Intuit Dome. The staff additionally agreed to pay Aspiration greater than $50 million in carbon-offsetting funds to attempt to turn out to be carbon impartial, in keeping with a number of sources briefed on the deal who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to debate it publicly.
Aspiration by no means went public and it started to flounder the subsequent 12 months. Still, Ballmer stood by the corporate, collaborating in a $66 million fundraising spherical that concluded within the spring of 2023. Ballmer invested one other $9,999,997.92 into the corporate, as first reported by The Athletic, even because it was dropping cash and shedding workers. It additionally tried to search out new traders at the moment to stabilize the corporate, however principally failed. Most of the brand new investments got here from Sanberg, Ibrahim AlHusseini — a Aspiration board member who later pleaded responsible to federal fraud — and Ballmer. There was only one new investor: Dennis Wong, Ballmer’s longtime good friend and the Clippers’ vice chairman.
While Ballmer was a key investor, the contract with Leonard precipitated pressure throughout the firm and amongst its administration. Sanberg was a number one proponent of signing Leonard and granting him fairness, regardless of doubts from others on the firm.
“I am personally contributing stock to Kawhi to make this partnership possible,” Sanberg wrote members of his management staff in a May 2022 e mail obtained by The Athletic. “Aspiration’s CEO judged the deal to be not worth doing. For avoidance of doubt, any and all benefit to Aspiration from the Kawhi deal is being subsidized by my contributing my equity to make this happen.”
Some Aspiration executives, on the time, questioned why the corporate signed a notoriously laconic and personal participant to a advertising deal. The contract additionally gave Leonard leeway to get out of collaborating in advertising campaigns. While advertising workers with the corporate tried to search out methods to make use of him in a industrial, going as far as to debate concepts and draw up potential visuals for it, Leonard by no means publicly promoted Aspiration.
Leonard’s contract was additionally considerably extra profitable than Aspiration’s different superstar preparations, in keeping with a former government. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. every obtained lower than $2 million in fairness, whereas Drake invested $4 million in alternate for carbon offsets.
The Clippers and Ballmer have maintained that they did nothing fallacious. While Ballmer stated within the days after the information of Leonard’s contract emerged that he linked his star along with his former key sponsor, he stated the association was allowed by league guidelines. Frank, who obtained a multi-year contract extension final season, had repeatedly denied any salary-cap circumvention.
“Pablo Torre Finds Out” is produced by Meadowlark Media and have become a part of The Athletic Podcast Network final September by a licensing deal.
This story can be up to date.
— Law Murray and Dan Woike contributed to this story