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Baxter Holmes
Multiple Authors
Kawhi Leonard and his uncle and business adviser Dennis Robertson have been interviewed by NBA investigators as part of the league’s inquiry into allegations that the LA Clippers circumvented the salary cap to compensate Leonard, according to sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and other team executives have also sat for interviews, sources said, as have executives for Aspiration, the now-defunct green banking company at the center of the allegations.
Before Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday in San Antonio, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the investigation was “far along” and that the league is “close to the point now where I think we need to wrap this up.”
Silver did not specify a timeline for when the investigation would conclude but said the Clippers need “to understand what situation they are going to be operating under, and so do the other 29 teams.”
Publicly, the Clippers and Ballmer have denied the allegations and have adamantly maintained that there is no evidence supporting them.
But privately, some Clippers officials have grown frustrated trying to prove innocence for a violation they say they didn’t commit, according to sources with knowledge of their thinking. Despite their certainty that they did nothing wrong, team officials seem less sure about the outcome of the high-profile investigation and whether the NBA’s richest owner will face punishment, the sources said.
ESPN spoke to people in and around the NBA about the investigation’s possible outcomes. Though it’s unclear what the investigation has uncovered about the allegations of salary cap circumvention, some results could prompt pushback from the team, the National Basketball Players Association or other owners.
The NBA launched its investigation in September following a series of podcasts from former ESPN contributor Pablo Torre, who cited internal documents that showed Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration through his personal LLC in September 2021. That month, the Clippers signed a $300 million deal with Aspiration, making the company the “first founding partner” of the Intuit Dome.
Six months later, Aspiration signed its $28 million endorsement deal with Leonard. An unnamed employee who purportedly worked for the banking company told Torre that Leonard’s sponsorship deal “was to circumvent the salary cap.”
Though Ballmer has said he introduced Leonard to Aspiration, he told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne in September that he had no knowledge of the player’s deal and denied he directed the company to strike one.
A source close to Leonard’s camp also denied the allegations to ESPN, saying the Clippers weren’t involved with Leonard’s deal beyond the 2021 introduction, that there was never any mention of the salary cap or attempts to circumvent it, and that the language in Leonard’s Aspiration deal was similar to that in his other sponsorship agreements.
The source said members of Leonard’s camp “had nothing to hide” from the NBA’s investigators and said, “Bottom line — it wasn’t a ‘no show’ deal.”
Following the NBA’s board of governors meeting in September in New York, Silver said “the burden is on the league” to bring forth any discipline, adding that the NBA and its investigators would look at “the totality of the evidence” and that “as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety.”
Under the NBA’s 2023 collective bargaining agreement, teams can be punished for circumventing the salary cap. Penalties include fines up to $7.5 million, direct forfeiture of draft picks, voiding any player contract and a suspension of up to a year for any team personnel found to have engaged in such a violation.
Outside of punishment for salary cap circumvention, it’s unclear what penalties the Clippers could face, and sources with knowledge of the process and with the NBPA’s thinking suggested that some lesser charges pose complications.
Punishing the team for not knowing enough about Leonard’s sponsorship deal with Aspiration, for instance, would be challenging, some of these sources said, because NBA teams are not allowed to be involved in or have knowledge of such agreements, according to the NBA’s operations manual.
Two sources with knowledge of the players’ association’s thinking said that if the team were to be punished in such a way, the NBPA would likely push back.
“The NBPA would and should lose its mind over that,” one source said.
Punishing the team for a conflict of interest — that is, having a sponsorship deal with a company that separately engaged in a sponsorship deal with a player — is also challenging, the sources with knowledge of the process said. One called it a “slippery slope,” as there are other examples of teams and players across the NBA having separate sponsorship deals with the same company.
Silver acknowledged as much in September, telling reporters, “I get it that if a building is the Pepsi Center, there’s a possibility that a player could have a deal with Pepsi. I think it would be unfair to the players if there was a so-called corporate deal done with the league or team that they would thereby be precluded from having deals with those same organizations, particularly many of the ones that are endemic to sports that want to actively invest in players and with no suggestion whatsoever that they’re doing it to aid the team in any way.”
If the NBA presented a lesser punishment that the Clippers disputed, the team could seek the intervention of a “system arbitrator,” a person appointed by the NBA and NBPA to settle such disputes, as ESPN has previously reported. That person could review the evidence and grant or deny Silver the ability to punish the team.
Some of the sources with knowledge of the investigative process cautioned against the idea that Silver would seek to punish the Clippers because of any public pressure to do so.
Rather, they said that the most important people Silver must address are the other 29 NBA owners — and that, however the matter unfolds, the commissioner will be required to explain the results to rival owners in a way they consider fair.
Two sources said that if Silver tried to administer punishment to the Clippers without clear evidence of guilt, other teams and owners could consider it a worrying precedent.
“I respect Adam, and I don’t think he’s stupid,” said one source, who has worked closely with Silver through the years.
“If Wachtell delivers the report that says, ‘Well, we don’t have it,’ I don’t think Adam is going to push it further,” the source added, referring to the law firm hired to lead the investigation.
On Wednesday, Silver addressed public perception regarding the investigation.
“I certainly hear and read things all the time about the perception of what really happened or didn’t happen here, and I think my only reaction is: I wouldn’t be doing my job if ultimately I issued a determination based on perception,” Silver said. “My job is to follow the facts. What essentially happens here is that the factual report, together with findings, will be made by this independent firm. That’s presented to me. It’s then, ultimately, my role to determine what the appropriate discipline, if any, should be meted out based on their findings.”
