The Los Angeles Clippers were hit with an NBA death penalty after the league concluded a year-long investigation into allegations that the team circumvented the NBA’s salary cap to funnel money to star forward Kawhi Leonard.
The Clippers will forfeit five first-round picks and must pay a $30 million fine. Additionally, principal owner Steve Ballmer is banned from the NBA for a year; Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year; president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months; and Kawhi Leonard himself must pay a fine of $700,000.
“I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.
Earlier this summer, the Clippers traded Leonard to the Toronto Raptors, but the trade was held up by the league’s investigation. The trade is now expected to be finalized.
A year ago, former ESPN reporter Pablo Torre began speaking out on a series of podcasts about the possibility the Clippers were paying Kawhi Leonard under the table.
The NBA subsequently began investigating a $28 million endorsement deal between Leonard and a company called Aspiration Fund Adviser LLC. The investigation essentially was centered around the idea that the Clippers invested money into Aspiration, who in turn paid Leonard money as an “endorsement” despite Leonard not making any promotional appearances for the company.
Aspiration filed for bankruptcy last year and the company’s co-founder Joseph Sandberg was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to defrauding investors of more than $248 million.
The NBA’s investigation found that Leonard was “pressuring” the Clippers to help him obtain off-court income opportunities through his uncle and former business manager Dennis Robertson.
Leonard and Robertson have come under fire before. Robertson was heavily involved in Leonard’s contentious departure from the San Antonio Spurs in 2018, after Robertson did not believe team doctors should have cleared Leonard for game participation due to lingering leg issues after Leonard was intentionally injured by Zaza Pachulia during a 2017 NBA playoff game.
Leonard left San Antonio and joined the Toronto Raptors, where he became recognized as one of the greatest players in the NBA.
We the North
Toronto was a city on fire in June 2019.
The team’s Jurassic Park outdoor fan section (a more lively precursor to the Bucks’ Deer District) was jumping.
Drake, still at his zenith atop the music industry, was courtside at each Toronto Raptors playoff game. Masai Ujiri, the Raptors’ genius general manager, was soaking up praise for constructing one of the best single-season teams of the 21st century.
Leonard, then 27 years old, was at the center of it all carrying a bum leg and the hopes of an entire nation all the way to an NBA championship. By the time the Raptors had defeated the Golden State Warriors, Leonard was being compared to Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan for his clutch heroics.
The fun wouldn’t last.
Leonard didn’t mind staying in Toronto but wanted the team to trade for Oklahoma City Thunder star Paul George. Leonard also wanted a myriad of perks, many of which would be enjoyed by Robertson.
The Los Angeles Clippers were willing to take on Leonard, his uncle and their set of demands.
The Clippers were even willing to trade for Paul George at Leonard’s request, sending several first-round picks and future two-time league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the Thunder for George.
The Clippers rebranded themselves as the team that runs L.A., an attempted diss of the Lakers, who had recently acquired LeBron James and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer looked like the smartest guy in the room immediately infusing his new team with elite talent.
But the hype was never real. The Lakers won the NBA championship that year, not the Clippers, and the pairing of Leonard and George never peaked due mostly to injuries to both players.
The Thunder took what the Clippers gave them and turned it into the best team in the NBA, winning the championship in 2025. George ultimately bounced for Philadelphia and then was traded to Boston.
In the end, Leonard decided he’d been better off staying in Toronto, and the Clippers agreed to trade him back to the Raptors on June 30.
Initially, the league demanded that the Raptors take on whatever consequences the league imposed following its investigation, but the Raptors agreed to wait until the investigation concluded in order to finalize the trade.
Not the first time
Ballmer is the second consecutive owner of the Clippers to be banned from the league.
In 2014, the newly minted NBA Commissioner banned Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life in Silver’s literal first act.
Sterling had been recorded by his mistress lambasting her for publicly associating with Black people, most notably Magic Johnson. Audio recordings of Sterling making racist comments became public, as did many other anecdotes of similar behavior.
In addition to losing Leonard, the Clippers also lost superstar James Harden around the trade deadline last season. The team will now attempt to rebuild without future draft assets.
