The nearly yearlong ordeal involving the Clippers, Kawhi Leonard and allegations of salary cap circumvention got even messier yesterday.
ESPN reported late Monday morning that the NBA’s ongoing investigation “has found no evidence” that Ballmer “funneled money through team sponsors” to circumvent the salary cap. The league, however, disputed the report.
“ESPN’s article regarding the LA Clippers investigation—for which the NBA declined to cooperate—contains numerous and significant inaccuracies,” the league said in a statement. “The results in this matter will be made clear once the investigation is concluded.”
ESPN also reported that lawyers for Ballmer and the Clippers “have been negotiating a resolution to the investigation” with the NBA.
The ESPN report by Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter Holmes and Ramona Shelburne cited “three people with knowledge of discussions between the two sides in recent days.” ESPN said it made multiple requests for comment to the NBA, “including an email Friday that detailed ESPN’s findings,” but the league did not respond. Instead, the NBA posted a statement on social media about two hours after the ESPN story was published that disputed the outlet’s reporting but did not specify which elements of the article were incorrect.
ESPN reported that the investigation had shifted toward examining “whether the team’s introduction of Leonard to team sponsors constitutes a violation of the league’s rules prohibiting salary cap circumvention.” The report also pointed out that such introductions were commonplace in the NBA, and in fact the league encouraged facilitating certain forms of dialogue between players and sponsors. Stephen Curry, for example, has a longstanding partnership with JPMorganChase, which holds the naming rights to the Warriors’ home arena, and with Rakuten, the team’s jersey patch sponsor of nine years. He’s appeared in multiple TV commercials for both companies.
Leonard’s sponsorships are different, though. The deal that sparked the investigation was Leonard’s arrangement with a green banking company called Aspiration, which first attracted scrutiny after a report by Pablo Torre on the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out in early September. Leonard landed a $28 million endorsement deal with the company in April 2022, a year after he signed a new contract with the Clippers. Torre’s report characterized Leonard’s arrangement with Aspiration as a “no-show job,” and one source told Torre that the deal was intended to “circumvent the salary cap.” Torre and his staff won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting. (Leonard and former Aspiration CEO Andrei Cherny have denied that the deal was a no-show arrangement.)
Ballmer was an investor in Aspiration, hence the allegation that the now-bankrupt company was being used to funnel money to Leonard on top of his NBA salary. Ballmer invested $60 million in Aspiration, and the company had a separate $300 million, 23-year sponsorship deal with the team. But the company went belly-up. Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg pleaded guilty in October 2025 to defrauding investors and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Ballmer’s lawyer wrote a letter to the sentencing judge saying Ballmer had been “flagrantly defrauded” by Sanberg.
But the NBA is also looking into two other endorsement deals Leonard had with companies that did not scam the Clippers. Torre reported earlier this month that the NBA’s investigation had expanded to include Leonard’s sponsorship with Daktronics, the South Dakota-based video board manufacturer that built the video display in the Clippers’ home arena. Leonard’s deal with Boingo Wireless, a telecom company, is also part of the current NBA investigation, ESPN reported on Monday.
That’s why ESPN’s report on the investigation’s findings was so surprising. Leonard didn’t have just one fishy endorsement deal with one shady company. He had at least two other sponsorships with businesses that, while legitimate, have no real need for a celebrity pitchman. Have you ever seen a marketing campaign for a scoreboard manufacturer or a company that operates WiFi hotspots? You probably haven’t seen one featuring Kawhi Leonard.
The idea that the Clippers innocently introduced multiple sponsors to Leonard and had no further involvement in negotiating the apparent non-endorsements strains credulity for a number of reasons. Chief among them is a September report from the Toronto Star that Leonard’s team had previously sought other impermissible financial arrangements. According to the Star, Leonard’s uncle and manager, Dennis Robertson, had asked the Raptors to give Leonard an ownership stake in the Maple Leafs as part of Leonard’s free agency negotiations with Toronto in 2019. The Star also reported that Robertson wanted the Raptors to facilitate endorsement deals, but that Leonard “didn’t want to do anything for the money.”
When you look at the reported negotiations with Toronto and the multiple questionable deals with Clippers sponsors, a pattern emerges. If, after everything we already know, the NBA does conclude that Leonard and the Clippers did nothing wrong, it’s going to have to provide a very good explanation. Without one, fans and other NBA teams would have every right to be furious.
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