addressed the Clippers\u2019<\/a> punishment during his concert at the Intuit Dome. <\/p>\n\u201cShoutout any Clipper fans in the building \u2014 we gon pray for y\u2019all,\u201d Cole told the crowd, drawing boos in response. He pushed back immediately. \u201cNah, don\u2019t do that \u2014 this the wrong time to do that. They need love and support. Y\u2019all seen what Adam Silver just did to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NBA announced that the Clippers would forfeit five consecutive first-round draft picks from 2029 through 2033. They will also pay a $30 million fine, and see owner Steve Ballmer suspended for a full year after a yearlong investigation found the organization violated salary cap circumvention rules by funneling money to Kawhi Leonard through no-show endorsement deals with companies including Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, and Daktronics. <\/p>\n
Business operations president Gillian Zucker received a one-year unpaid suspension. The league said it was for his direct involvement in the impermissible arrangements and for providing false or misleading information during the investigation.<\/p>\n
Basketball operations president Lawrence Frank was suspended six months. Leonard himself was fined $700,000. Commissioner Silver said he was \u201cdeeply disappointed\u201d by the findings, and the league also imposed a five-year compliance and monitoring program on the franchise.<\/p>\n
Ballmer, through his attorney, called the investigation a \u201cwitch hunt\u201d in a letter released by the team. The Clippers have rejected the league\u2019s findings, vowing to fight the punishment through arbitration. <\/p>\n
Ballmer told ESPN that he had \u201cno control\u201d over Aspiration. He described it as a \u201cfraudulent company\u201d that independently pursued a deal with Leonard after the Clippers merely introduced the two parties, a standard practice the league permits.<\/p>\n
He said his $50 million personal investment in Aspiration amounted to an ownership stake below 3%. And that he had no idea \u201cwhy they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi.\u201d The forfeited draft picks alone will shape the Clippers\u2019 roster-building for the better part of a decade, regardless of how the arbitration process concludes.<\/p>\n
Pablo Torre first broke the story. He revealed that Leonard\u2019s uncle had reportedly asked the Toronto Raptors about similar no-show endorsement arrangements as far back as 2019, suggesting that the pattern existed before the Clippers deal and wasn\u2019t an isolated 2021 arrangement. <\/p>\n
Silver told reporters he had \u201cnever heard of\u201d Aspiration. And had no knowledge of any endorsement arrangement involving Leonard before Torre\u2019s reporting surfaced.<\/p>\n
A claim that, if true, means the violations operated well outside the league\u2019s normal visibility for years before anyone caught them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The league punished the Minnesota Timberwolves with a $3.5 million fine and the loss of five first-round draft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":825903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[7,559,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,6],"class_list":["post-830121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-clippers","tag-basketball","tag-clippers","tag-la","tag-la-clippers","tag-laclippers","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangelesclippers","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117230795740962875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}