Serious consequences loom for Clippers in Kawhi Leonard controversy

The NBA preseason tips off in less than three weeks, officially starting the countdown to the 2025-26 season. Oklahoma City will enter as defending champions, but the spotlight has shifted away from the court and onto a growing controversy that could have serious consequences for the Los Angeles Clippers, Kawhi Leonard, and the league itself.

According to journalist Pablo Torre of The Athletic, the Clippers set up a bogus tree-planting company in order to skirt salary-cap rules and secretly pay Leonard more money. Torre alleges that Ballmer injected $50 million into the shell company, which then signed a contract with Leonard worth $28 million. The kicker: Leonard didn’t have to do a single thing in return, other than stay with the Clippers.

Back in 2019, Leonard shocked the basketball world by leaving the Raptors after winning both the championship and Finals MVP. Instead of joining LeBron James and Anthony Davis with the Lakers, Leonard chose to return to his native Southern California to play for the Clippers.

Clippers deny wrongdoing

The Clippers quickly issued a statement denying Torre’s report, saying the organization and Ballmer “have done nothing to evade the salary cap or act improperly with Aspiration,” the company at the center of the allegations.

Torre counters that he has documentation proving the arrangement was real. He also says a former Aspiration employee told him anonymously that Leonard never fulfilled any promotional obligations tied to the contract. “It was just a way to get around the NBA’s salary cap,” the source said. “The biggest amount paid for marketing had zero impact or visibility in the press, and he never had to do anything afterward.”

The investigation also shows that Leonard is still listed as a creditor for an additional $7 million after Aspiration declared bankruptcy. That debt is tied to one of Leonard’s companies, KL2 Aspire LLC.

A secret deal worth millions

The arrangement dates back to 2022, according to Torre, when Aspiration signed the deal with Leonard. By 2025, Aspiration had filed for bankruptcy, leaving Leonard with $28 million in “extra” income that had nothing to do with basketball.

Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO and the eighth-richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of nearly $150 billion, is the wealthiest owner in American pro sports. Leonard officially signed a four-year, $176.2 million deal with the Clippers in 2021 after an initial three-year, $103.1 million contract. He then agreed to a three-year, $149.5 million extension in January 2024. Torre suggests the secret payments were designed to sweeten the pot and keep Leonard from leaving Los Angeles.

The NBA’s salary cap rules

The NBA salary cap is meant to level the playing field by preventing deep-pocketed owners from simply outspending rivals to build superteams. While teams are allowed to exceed the cap under certain exceptions and pay a luxury tax, what the Clippers are accused of goes far beyond that.

If proven, it would represent a direct attempt to cheat the system, potentially giving the Clippers an illegal advantage in holding onto Leonard.

What a Clippers punishment could look like

The NBA has strict penalties for teams that illegally circumvent the salary cap. Those include fines ranging from $4.5 million for a first offense to $5.5 million for repeat violations, the loss of a first-round draft pick, and even the cancellation of the fraudulent contract itself.

League rules make clear that it is illegal for a team to arrange with a sponsor, business partner, or third party to pay one of its players for basketball-related services while disguising it as unrelated. Any such deal deemed “drastically out of line with market logic” would be considered fraudulent.

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