Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer hands Kawhi Leonard his jersey as he and Paul George are introduced on July 24, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
Two weeks after
published his initial bombshell investigation on the L.A. Clippers’ alleged scheme to circumvent the NBA salary cap — by routing a substantial amount of extra money to Kawhi Leonard through a sham endorsement deal with a team sponsor — new details keep coming out, and the league continues to have major egg on its face.
On Thursday, Torre provided even more reporting to show how the Clippers purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of carbon credits from Aspiration (the now-disgraced “green bank” at the center of the allegations) while team ownership — i.e., Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong — also invested similarly huge amounts in the failing company over the course of 18 months, seemingly timed to the schedule of Kawhi’s payments.
Furthermore, Torre obtained a joint statement signed by former Aspiration executives stating that the Leonard endorsement deal was presented to them “as a completed arrangement”, was not reviewed through normal channels, and was considered “not in the company’s best interest” and “strategically difficult to justify”. (This helps to rebut former Aspiration CEO Andrei Cherny’s denial that Leonard’s arrangement was a “no-show” deal requiring literally nothing from the star player in return.)
Finally, Torre unearthed a copy of Aspiration’s official sponsorship agreement with the Clippers, which — contrary to NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s initial claim that he’d never heard of Aspiration — contains language stating that the $300 million deal explicitly required NBA approval. (That deal, by the way, obligated Aspiration to pay the Clippers $7.5 million annually at the same time Aspiration owed Kawhi $7 million annually.)
All of which is to say, this rapidly growing Mount Everest of circumstantial evidence makes it hard to believe anything except the simplest explanation to tie it all together: That the richest owner in all of sports had the money and the motivation to try to keep Leonard on his team, going above and beyond the maximum 4-year, $176.27 million contract allowed under the salary-cap rules in 2021 by also funneling him cash on the side through a company that was a team sponsor — and seemed just environmentally friendly enough to perhaps ward off suspicion within the most left-leaning major men’s league in U.S. pro sports.
Torre calls all of this the “biggest scandal in the history of the modern NBA,” and while I think there’s a case for Tim Donaghy there as well — though maybe less so now that gambling is so pervasive across sports — it’s certainly a big deal for a league where, previously, bending the cap for even the deeply mediocre Joe Smith was punishable by voiding his contract and stripping the Timberwolves of five first-round draft picks and a then-record fine of $3.5 million.
In fact, the only thing saving Silver from being in a bigger bind in terms of punishing Ballmer and the Clippers is the fact that, well, it’s the Clippers.