The NBA has imposed the largest punishment in league history on the Los Angeles Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer after a year-long investigation found that the organization circumvented salary-cap rules to help direct millions of dollars to Kawhi Leonard.
The Clippers will forfeit five first-round picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033, and pay a $30 million fine, the league announced Wednesday. Ballmer has also been suspended for one year “for knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities.”
According to the NBA, Ballmer approved a Clippers agreement with Aspiration because he knew it was a condition for the company to enter into a sponsorship deal with Leonard.
NBA says Clippers helped arrange Leonard business deals
NBA investigators said the Clippers attempted to avoid the league’s anti-circumvention rules by advancing a “novel theory” that teams could introduce business partners to players when the player or the player’s representative requested those introductions. The league rejected that argument.
The NBA’s report said Leonard pressured the Clippers through 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 has been ordered to repay the NBA $700,000 for his role in the matter. Robertson has been barred from engaging with NBA teams for five years.
Leonard’s future remains uncertain. The investigation’s conclusion could clear the way for his trade to the Toronto Raptors. The Clippers agreed to send him there earlier this summer, but the deal had been placed on hold.
“ 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 said in a statement. “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.”
Clippers team president Lawrence Frank has been suspended for six months, while Gillian Zucker, the team’s president of business operations, has been suspended for one year.
The NBA said Frank and Zucker received different penalties because Frank was open and honest about his recollections, while Zucker was evasive and “inconsistent” during her interviews.
“The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “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 involved were the Clippers in Kawhi Leonard’s side deals?
Wachtell Lipton, the law firm hired by the NBA, found that the Clippers initiated deals between Leonard and four companies: Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance. Investigators also found that the team facilitated endorsement agreements between Leonard and each company.
The NBA’s investigators said additional information could still emerge.
“More information will likely surface over time,” the NBA’s report said. “Investigators continue to receive information relevant to the subjects discussed in this report, including as recently as this week.”
The announcement concludes an investigation that lasted a full year. It began with an examination of whether the Clippers circumvented salary-cap rules through Leonard’s endorsement agreement with Aspiration, then expanded to include other business relationships.
The “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast later reported that Leonard had a multimillion-dollar sponsorship agreement with Daktronics, which manufactured the large video screen at the Intuit Dome. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the NBA questioned Daktronics about its relationship with Leonard.
How did the NBA investigation begin?
The investigation stemmed from a Sept. 3, 2025, report by Torre’s podcast alleging that Leonard had accepted a $28 million no-show contract from Aspiration, a California environmental company that had also been the Clippers’ jersey-patch partner through the end of the 2022-23 season.
The NBA examined whether the agreement enabled the Clippers to circumvent the salary cap by providing Leonard with compensation beyond his team salary and above the amount permitted under the league’s collective bargaining agreement. Such an arrangement would violate NBA rules.
Aspiration filed for bankruptcy in March 2025, listing Leonard and the Clippers among its leading creditors. Court documents filed by the company stated that Leonard was owed $7 million through his limited liability company, KL2 Aspire, LLC.
The NBA hired Wachtell to investigate days after the podcast report. The firm has conducted several major investigations for the league, including its 2014 inquiry into former Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
After Wachtell was hired, Silver said he expected the investigation to “get to the bottom” of the Leonard endorsement case.
“We will be thorough, but we will begin with a presumption of innocence, not a presumption of guilt … and then we will follow the facts,” Silver said last September at a Front Office Sports conference.
Ballmer’s financial ties to Aspiration
The Clippers’ relationship with Aspiration extended beyond Leonard’s endorsement agreement. Leonard also received $20 million in equity from Joe Sanberg, the company’s co-founder, who pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges last fall.
Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration in 2021 as the company prepared for a public offering. That year, the Clippers signed Aspiration to a jersey-patch agreement worth more than $300 million, making it a founding sponsor of the Intuit Dome.
The team also agreed to pay Aspiration more than $50 million in carbon-offsetting payments as part of an effort to become carbon neutral, according to multiple sources briefed on the agreement who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Aspiration never went public and began struggling the following year. Ballmer nevertheless continued to support the company, participating in a $66 million fundraising round completed in spring 2023.
Ballmer invested another $9,999,997.92 in the company, as first reported by The Athletic, even as Aspiration lost money and cut staff. The company also sought new investors to stabilize its finances but largely failed. Most of the new funding came from Sanberg, Ibrahim AlHusseini—an Aspiration board member who later pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges—and Ballmer. The only other new investor was Dennis Wong, Ballmer’s longtime friend and the Clippers’ vice chairman.
Dispute over Leonard’s Aspiration agreement
Although Ballmer was a major investor, Leonard’s contract created tension within Aspiration and its management team. Sanberg strongly supported signing Leonard and awarding him equity despite concerns from other executives.
“I am personally contributing stock to Kawhi to make this partnership possible,” Sanberg wrote to members of his leadership team in a May 2022 email 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 questioned why the company had signed a marketing agreement with Leonard, a famously private and laconic player. The contract also allowed Leonard to opt out of marketing campaigns.
Aspiration’s marketing staff explored ways to feature Leonard in a commercial, including developing concepts and preliminary visuals, but Leonard never publicly promoted the company.
Leonard’s agreement was also considerably more valuable than Aspiration’s other celebrity deals, according to a former executive. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. each received less than $2 million in equity, while Drake invested $4 million in exchange for carbon offsets.
The Clippers and Ballmer have maintained that they did nothing wrong. Ballmer acknowledged after the Leonard contract became public that he had connected his star player with a former key sponsor, but said the arrangement complied with NBA rules. Frank, who received a multiyear contract extension last season, repeatedly denied salary-cap circumvention.
“Pablo Torre Finds Out” is produced by Meadowlark Media and joined The Athletic Podcast Network last September through a licensing agreement.
This story will be updated.
— Law Murray and Dan Woike contributed to this story
