Five first-round picks and $30 million. That is what the NBA took from the Los Angeles Clippers in September 2026 after a year-long investigation found significant violations of its salary-cap circumvention rules.
The league also suspended owner Steve Ballmer, other team executives, and Dennis Robertson, who is Kawhi Leonard’s adviser and uncle. Leonard himself was fined $700,000. The penalties rank among the largest the league has ever handed a team. The investigation was run by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, which had earlier looked into former Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
How it came out
It began with a podcast. On Sept. 3, 2025, sportswriter Pablo Torre reported on “Pablo Torre Finds Out” that Leonard had signed a $28 million, four-year endorsement deal in 2021 with Aspiration, an environmental company that later went bankrupt and was described as fraudulent. Ballmer had put $50 million into Aspiration. Torre found the contract because a company linked to Leonard was listed as a creditor in Aspiration’s bankruptcy filings, and an anonymous former employee told him the deal was meant to break the cap.
It was a no-show arrangement. Leonard did not have to do anything beyond staying a Clipper, and had never carried out any endorsement work for the company. John Karalis of the Boston Sports Journal later reported Leonard also received $20 million in Aspiration stock, bringing the total promised to $48 million.
The Clippers called the allegations “absurd” and “flat out wrong.” On Sept. 4, Ballmer told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne that the team had introduced Leonard to Aspiration after signing a $300 million sponsorship deal with it, which the rules allow, but had no part in Leonard’s own contract. He said he had been “conned” as an investor. The NBA announced its investigation the same day Torre’s first episode appeared.
A week later, Torre reported that Clippers co-chairman Dennis Wong invested $1.9 million in Aspiration in December 2022, nine days before Leonard was paid $1.75 million. The company had laid off 20% of its staff that same day.
Leonard denied cheating on Sept. 29. “None of us did…wrongdoing,” he said, adding, “I don’t deal with conspiracies.” He said he was still owed money by the company.
More deals, a Pulitzer
Torre kept digging through 2026 and published further undisclosed endorsement deals, including one with Daktronics, the builder of the Intuit Dome scoreboard. A former contractor at the arena called it “1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap.” In March 2026 Torre won the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for the work.
On Aug. 17, 2026, ESPN reported, citing at least three sources, that the NBA had found “no evidence” Ballmer funneled money to Leonard through sponsors. The league quickly issued a statement disputing that account.
