Right about the time the initial reaction to the Kawhi Leonard story was finally dying down on Wednesday, with Pablo Torre’s podcast making a case that the richest owner in all of professional sports — the LA Clippers’ Steve Ballmer — might have circumvented the salary cap and the NBA announcing its investigation as a result, the team that was already in the worst kind of spotlight decided to hop into the headlines yet again.
They sent a second statement.
Following on the 82-word, initial response from the day before, in which the Clippers denied any wrongdoing in Torre’s report while claiming that “any contrary assertion is provably false,” they upped the ante with a 199-word denial that included this line in the third paragraph:
“There is nothing unusual or untoward about team sponsors doing endorsement deals with players on the same team.”
On its face, that is true. But what the Clippers chose not to acknowledge was the suspicious nature of Leonard’s reported contract with the now-defunct former team sponsor, Aspiration, the one that was set to pay him a whopping $28 million over a four-year period in exchange for what appears to be nothing in return and dwarfed deals given to higher-profile celebs like Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr. and Drake who actually provided endorsements. And keep in mind, this statement was released before a Boston Sports Journal report emerged on Thursday alleging that Leonard actually had two deals with Aspiration that could have totaled $48 million combined.
There was no mention in the Clippers’ statement of Ballmer’s involvement in said company, either, the reported $50 million investment from his personal LLC that was deposited approximately three months before Leonard’s deal was done (in April 2022) and two years after a league investigation into Leonard’s free agency should have inspired maximum discretion. No reference to the seven former Aspiration employees who chose to anonymously assist in Torre’s reporting, one of whom shared stories of how the payment of Leonard’s lucrative contract was always deemed a top priority for the finance department — even as the company was careening into bankruptcy — because his infamous and influential uncle, Dennis Robertson, would call to collect.
Amid this latest round of serious accusations lobbed against Ballmer, and with so much at stake in this sensitive situation, the convenient omission of such key facts only worsens the already-poor optics. Especially considering so many of their competitors believe there’s real reason for the Clippers, and Leonard, to be concerned here.
When it comes to the worthiness of the investigation, and the league-wide reaction to the details that have emerged to this point, rival executives who spoke to The Athletic on the condition of anonymity made one thing abundantly clear: No, this is not the norm. The executives were granted anonymity so as to allow them to speak more freely.
For starters, as one pointed out, the combination of Ballmer’s significant investment in a team sponsor and Leonard’s curious contract (or contracts, perhaps) were reason enough to put them in harm’s way with the league. Several noted the size of Leonard’s deal as a red flag all its own — even before the BSJ report, and independent of the fact that he didn’t provide any services in return.
Others wondered aloud if this explained why Leonard, who has historically pushed for every penny in his personal negotiations, would later agree to an extension in 2024 that was below maximum-salary level and afforded the Clippers additional roster flexibility. There was far more shock and dismay than there was apathy or empathy.
“This (sort of endorsement deal) does not happen,” one long-tenured general manager said of the nature of this arrangement.
“I’ve never seen it,” said another executive.
Former Dallas Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban was among the few who took the opposite stance, defending Ballmer on social media and pointing the finger at the Aspiration co-founder, Joe Sanberg, who agreed to plead guilty last month to defrauding investors of $248 million.
“Scammers do scammy things,” wrote Cuban, who even joined Torre on a follow-up podcast Wednesday night to discuss the matter.
All of these questions coming the Clippers’ way are fair, just as they were six years ago when Robertson’s outlandish requests for illegal perks in free agency — houses, private planes, part ownership of the team, a guaranteed amount of off-court endorsement money, etc. — compelled rival owners to share their concerns with the league.
Many of the same themes that raised suspicions back then remain. And while the NBA didn’t find evidence of the Clippers granting improper benefits, it’s worth remembering that the message sent from the league office should still be seen as a North Star of sorts.
Per my Dec. 23, 2019 report …
(Silver) sees salary cap circumvention as a cardinal sin in the NBA, and will always keep a watchful eye on that front. If any relevant evidence of improper benefits surfaces in the future, the league will re-open the investigation and pursue the charges yet again.
And … here we are.
As Torre and I discussed on the Athletic NBA Daily podcast, we won’t know for quite some time if these accusations stick. There are still many questions left to be answered that will determine whether commissioner Adam Silver drops the hammer, most notably relating to Ballmer’s level of influence within Aspiration or, potentially, in his possible procurement of Leonard’s deal. The Clippers are the ones who claimed at the outset that they could prove these allegations false, and will have every opportunity to do just that.
For Silver, it’s time to pull the curtain all the way back here and finally separate the facts from fiction. You can’t have a luxury tax system like the NBA’s that is essentially a hard cap — a structure designed, in part, to level the playing field with less-wealthy owners — only to look the other way when there’s evidence that one of the richest people on the planet might be finding ways around it. And considering Ballmer already has history here even before the summer of 2019, there should be even more incentive to do a thorough and definitive investigation.
Lest anyone forgets, Ballmer was fined $250,000 by the league in the summer of 2015 for offering DeAndre Jordan a third-party endorsement deal from Lexus as part of the team’s free agency pitch (Jordan reportedly would have earned an additional $200,000 annually). Ballmer addressed that fine with team employees at the time, when his internal memo sent the kind of message that might hold true today.
“We believed we were doing this the right way, and any circumvention was inadvertent,” Ballmer wrote back then. “In our effort to support our players in every way possible, we as an organization must be diligent in complying with the CBA.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Now, we wait to find out if he heeded his own advice.
(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)