The Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, who are currently under investigation for potential salary cap violations related to payments outside of the league\u2019s salary cap, also received millions in a second questionable sponsorship deal, according to a report by the podcast \u201cPablo Torre Finds Out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The podcast, citing multiple anonymous sources inside the Clippers and the Intuit Dome project, reported a previously unknown deal with Daktronics, the company that manufactured the Intuit Dome\u2019s Halo video screen and others in the sports world.<\/p>\n
The Clippers have been under investigation by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, with a focus on a $28 million endorsement deal given to Leonard by Aspiration, a former Clippers sponsor, since September. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has maintained that he was defrauded by Aspiration and its co-founder, Joe Sanburg.<\/p>\n
Sanburg was sentenced to 14 years for fraud this past June after he pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud.<\/p>\n
Torre\u2019s latest podcast, released Thursday night, cites multiple anonymous sources from inside the Clippers and the Intuit Dome project who said that Leonard\u2019s was a Clippers spokesperson for Daktronics. It\u2019s unclear when the contract began and ended. One anonymous source told Torre that the contract was for \u201cmillions of dollars.\u201d The company has no other celebrity endorsement deals that have been made public.<\/p>\n
When the podcast asked the company to confirm if Leonard had an endorsement deal, it referred them to a spokesperson for a crisis management firm who said, \u201cMy understanding is Daktronics doesn\u2019t have a deal with Kawhi right now.\u201d When asked for clarification, the spokesman said, \u201cI don\u2019t know what the company wants to say, or can say, given the Wachtell investigation and all that.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the NBA didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment on the latest allegations. The Clippers have not responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been frustration in and around the NBA as the investigation into the Clippers and Leonard has lasted an entire season. The results of that investigation are currently holding up a trade that would send Leonard from the Clippers back to Toronto \u2014 the team he left in free agency in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league did not pause the trade,\u201d NBA commissioner Adam Silver said of the Clippers-Raptors deal. \u201cThe parties to the trade made a decision not to go forward given that the investigation remained open, and any possible impact on Kawhi or his contract was yet to be known. And so, they chose not to live with that uncertainty, but that was well-known before the trade was proposed. I don\u2019t think there was any reason for people to believe that the status of Kawhi Leonard would change merely because he was traded. The investigation needs to run its course.\u201d<\/p>\n
That summer, according to multiple league sources granted anonymity to discuss the situation, Leonard\u2019s representatives, including his uncle Dennis Robertson, asked the Los Angeles Lakers for several impermissible benefits, including use of private aircraft, a home, guaranteed off-court earnings and even an ownership stake in the team.<\/p>\n
The Lakers, according to sources, informed Leonard\u2019s team that those requests violated the NBA\u2019s Collective Bargaining Agreement and amounted to salary cap circumvention.<\/p>\n
Leonard and the Clippers have maintained their innocence throughout the investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re going to be in the clear,\u201d Leonard said after the Clippers season. \u201cIt\u2019s not stressing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on the right side of this,\u201d Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said in February.<\/p>\n
Silver said earlier this summer that the investigation \u201ccan be wrapped up \u2014 and needs to be wrapped up \u2014 before next season.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the NBA finds there was a violation of the CBA, it can fine the Clippers millions of dollars, strip them of first-round picks, penalize Ballmer and even void Leonard\u2019s contract.<\/p>\n
According to Daktronics website, the company produces video boards for a number of NBA arenas, including in Phoenix, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Detroit, Memphis and Brooklyn. A search of \u201cKawhi Leonard\u201d returned no results on the company\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Law Murray and Mike Vorkunov contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, who are currently under investigation for potential salary cap violations related…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":966335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,30460,155,6,15],"class_list":["post-966334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl-draft","tag-football","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-nba","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117052043687549045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/966335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}