LOS ANGELES, Sept. 8 — The NBA has delivered what is effectively a death blow to the Los Angeles Clippers’ rebuild, stripping the franchise of five first-round draft picks and suspending owner Steve Ballmer for a year over a clandestine scheme to circumvent the salary cap. The league concluded its investigation on Sept. 2, fining Ballmer $30 million and banning him from team control for one year.
The punishment leaves the Clippers without a first-round pick under their control until 2034 — a half-decade of draft capital erased at the precise moment a young roster was poised to rebuild. Kawhi Leonard was ordered to pay $700,000 in restitution for improper benefits received by his uncle, Dennis Robertson, whom the NBA banned from conducting any future business within the league.
The ruling ranks among the steepest penalties in professional sports history.
A History of Hard Sanctions
The Clippers’ punishment invites direct comparison to the NFL’s 2012 bounty-program sanctions, when New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton was suspended for a full unpaid year, fined $500,000, and stripped of two second-round picks. Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams was suspended indefinitely, and general manager Mickey Loomis served an eight-game suspension without pay.
In 2000, the Minnesota Timberwolves were fined $3.5 million, with owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale suspended and the team stripped of five first-round picks for an under-the-table arrangement with player Joe Smith, who signed three consecutive low-salary one-year contracts beginning in 1999. Baseball has its own precedents.
The Houston Astros were fined the MLB maximum of $5 million and lost first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts for illegally stealing signs during their 2017 World Series run; general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were suspended for one year before their firings. The Boston Red Sox also forfeited their 2020 second-round pick, with replay operator J.T.
Watkins suspended one year and manager Alex Cora suspended for his role in the Astros scandal. The NFL’s Spygate case saw New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick fined $500,000, the organization fined $250,000, and the loss of their 2008 first-round pick for illegally filming New York Jets’ defensive signals.
The Strategic Calculus
The NCAA’s so-called “death penalty” against SMU in 1987 remains the benchmark: the Mustangs’ season was canceled outright, and scholarship restrictions forced the cancellation of the following year, with 55 scholarships stripped over four years for paying players under the table while on probation. More recently, the Atlanta Braves were caught between 2015 and 2017 circumventing international signing rules and bonus caps, losing 13 top international prospects, including prized shortstop Kevin Maitan. What this signals for the Clippers is stark.
The franchise now faces the broader stakes of a rebuild without its primary currency — draft picks — while its owner sits suspended and its star player carries a restitution order. The league’s message is unambiguous: the cost of gaming the cap is now measured in years, not dollars.
For a team stripped of control over its first-round picks for the better part of a decade, the path back to contention runs through a landscape the NBA has just made far more treacherous.
