The Los Angeles Clippers and their owner, Steve Ballmer, have denied allegations the team’s star forward, Kawhi Leonard, was paid $28m for a job that doesn’t exist.
Journalist Pablo Torre laid out the allegations in his podcast on Wednesday. Torre, citing legal documents, claims Ballmer employed Leonard for a non-existent role in one of his companies to circumvent the NBA salary cap, which punishes teams for spending too much on player salaries.
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Torre claims that Ballmer funded a now defunct tree-planting company called Aspiration. That company then allegedly entered into a $28m agreement with KL2 Aspire, LLC, a company owned by Leonard.
Torre says he could find no evidence that Leonard had ever performed any work for Aspiration, and there was a clause in the contract between KL2 Aspire and Aspiration effectively allowed Leonard to be paid even if he did no work. One former employee of Aspiration told Torre he had heard the deal with Leonard had been set up to “circumvent the salary cap.”
The Clippers and Ballmer denied the allegations in a statement released to Torre. “Neither Mr Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration,” the statement said. “Any contrary assertion is provably false.”
The NBA investigated Leonard’s advisor, Dennis Robertson, in 2019 and found the Clippers had not granted the player any impermissible benefits when they pursued him in free agency. Leonard, a six-time All-Star, joined the Clippers in July 2019 after leading the Toronto Raptors to the NBA title.
The NBA is yet to comment on Torre’s story, but has said in the past it would reopen the investigation into Robertson if new evidence emerged.