Five first-round picks from 2029 through 2033. A $30 million fine. A one-year suspension for owner Steve Ballmer. That was the NBA’s penalty for the Los Angeles Clippers, and it came three weeks after ESPN ran a story suggesting the league had found nothing to support the central charge against him.
The August 17 article, by Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter Holmes and Ramona Shelburne, said the investigation had found no evidence that Ballmer funneled money to Kawhi Leonard through sponsors to get around the salary cap. The league saw it differently. It said Ballmer had “knowingly” tried to help Leonard land off-court income and had approved an arrangement that was a precondition for Aspiration signing an endorsement deal with the player.
The NBA pushes back
League spokesperson Mike Bass said the ESPN story contained “numerous and significant inaccuracies” and noted that the network had not spoken with league investigators. ESPN held its ground. It told Awful Announcing, “We stand by our reporting, which included numerous attempts by ESPN to get comment from the NBA.”
Defenders of the piece have a point. The investigation had not established that Ballmer personally sent money to Leonard through Aspiration. One person familiar with the matter said the story was meant to update readers on where the inquiry stood, not to knock down earlier reporting.
Inside the building, the mood was sour. Staffers told Status the episode was a “disaster,” and one called it “an embarrassing moment.” The network had already lived through a rough summer of layoffs, including Ryan Clark, Karl Ravech, Tom Pelissero, Cam Newton and Bart Scott, and the loss of its top editor role.
The man who started it
Pablo Torre spent months on the Clippers story through his show, “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” working on his own after leaving ESPN. His investigation went on to win the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting. ESPN never consulted him before running its piece, and he called that a “mystery.” In his words, ESPN “presumably consumed at least some of the work we had done over the last year” and decided its framing felt more credible than that of a former employee backed by human sources and documents.
After the ruling, Torre posted what appeared to be the $28 million Aspiration contract that Leonard signed himself. Leonard was fined $700,000 and not suspended. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that Leonard knew nothing about any cap circumvention.
Some staffers worry about more than one bad story. A former employee told Status that ESPN is getting “more in bed with the leagues.” An ESPN spokesperson answered that the network keeps “a separation of church and state” between its journalism and its business sides. As of the Status report, ESPN had not publicly addressed the dispute beyond standing by the August 17 story.
