What we know about the NBA investigation into Steve Ballmer’s Clippers
On the eve of the Clippers training camp, the owner Steve Ballmer and the team put pressure on an NBA survey on allegations that the team has circumvented the league’s salary ceiling when a sustainable development company paid the Kawhi Leonard $ 21 million star.
Since the purchase of the team a decade ago, Ballmer has been looking for to bring to the Clippers also their first NBA title. The billionaire philanthropist was alternately encouraged and frustrated by a team that posted a record for victories every season under their property, but made the first releases of the playoffs. He also directed the construction of the most advanced and environmentally friendly arena in sport – the intuited dome of $ 2 billion which opened elegant criticism a year ago.
Now, a law firm best rated hired by the NBA tries to determine whether the team violated the league rules by channeling additional money in Leonard through a separate company in which the owner of the Clippers was an investor.
In recent weeks, Ballmer has been in a hurry for more details on his $ 50 million investment and the participation of 2% to 3% in The Firm Aspiration Partners, and if the Clippers knew that the company now disappeared paid millions in Leonard thanks to an approval agreement. The aspiration has provided what the company has described as “banking services and socially concerned and sustainable investment products”.
The Clippers forcefully published statements denying the reprehensible acts and saying that they welcome the investigation. Leonard and his representatives did not respond to requests for comments.
“There is nothing fun to be highlighted in this way,” said Ballmer during a recent forum organized by the Sports Business Journal. “It is much more fun to be highlighted to build a large arena. But that too will pass.”
A clippers spokesman said Thursday that they did not plan any interview for Ballmer “for the moment”, but Ballmer told the SBJ forum that he “felt quite confident … that we respected [by] rules. So I salute the investigation that the NBA does. He stressed that his investment in the aspiration came well before concluding his agreement with Leonard and that he was not involved in this agreement.
The salary ceiling limits what teams can spend on the wage bill of players to provide parity and prevent the richest teams from spending smaller market teams to acquire the best player. The NBA commissioner Adam Silver called attempts to bypass him a “cardinal sin”.
In this case, Leonard accepted a $ 28 million contract for approval and marketing work for the aspiration, which made its doors in March. Players are allowed to have separate approval and other commercial offers. In this case, the question is whether the clippers participated in the organization of the team agreement beyond the simple introduction of suction leaders in Leonard.
The most painful sanctions that the NBA could impose would be to suspend Ballmer for a maximum of one year and to oster the clippers their recovery choices in the first round up to five years. The team is already without choice in the first round in 2026 and 2028, having exchanged them. The loss of the remaining choices until 2032 would make it more difficult for Ballmer to realize this championship dream.
Kawhi Leonard before a clippers match against the Grizzlies at Intuit Dome in Inglewood.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The maximum fine that the league can impose is $ 7.5 million, a bread of bread compared to the estimated net value of Ballmer of $ 171 billion. Leonard’s performance has lacked expectations, so even the League for canceling the last two years of his contract would have limited the bite and would save the franchise the $ 100 million due to the 34 -year -old striker.
Provising that the clippers violated the salary ceiling could be difficult, because the NBA commissioner Adam Silver clearly indicated it during a team owners’ meeting. Many rises on the outcome of the investigation.
Ballmer, 69, established a solid relationship with Silver, who became a commissioner the same year, Ballmer bought the Clippers. The NBA 2026 star match should take place in Intuit Dome in February, and Ballmer chairs the league audit committee on the Council of Governors.
Ballmer philanthropy is well established. He and his wife, Connie, gave billions through their Ballmer group to improve the economic mobility of children and families in disadvantaged communities. (The Ballmer group is one of the foundations sponsoring the Early Childhood Education initiative of Los Angeles Times.)
Ballmer turned his attention to the Clippers in 2014, buying the team from the disgrace owner Donald Sterling, who was forced to sell for racist comments.
The price of $ 2 billion, almost four times what someone had already paid for an NBA team, was considered ridiculous at the time. The value of the franchise has almost tripled at around 5.5 billion dollars.
Bankruptcy documents show that the aspiration has paid $ 21 million in Leonard – and still owes him $ 7 million – after accepting a $ 28 million contract for business approval and marketing work. The Boston Sports Journal reported that Leonard also received a participation of $ 20 million in aspiration.
There is no trace of anything that Leonard did in the name of the aspiration. Several former employees have told athletics that Leonard’s agreement was an “non-presentation” arrangement in which Leonard would not have to do approval work.
The former chief of the aspiration exploitation and legal director, Mike Shuckerow, told ESPN that he was one of the three managers of the company who had signed a statement that said: “The [Aspiration] The team expressed their concerns at the time concerning the high cost of arrangement [with Leonard] And its lack of alignment with the brand’s brand and commercial strategy. Although subsequent marketing efforts have been undertaken, they were finally interrupted and should not be interpreted as support for the agreement itself. »»
However, the former CEO of aspiration Andrei Cherny wrote on X that Leonard’s contract “contained three pages of extended bonds that Leonard was to fulfill. And the contract clearly declared that if Leonard did not fulfill these obligations, the aspiration could terminate the contract.”
The initial aspiration funding included an investment of $ 50 million in December 2021 from Ballmer, which he recognized. The Clippers also agreed with a 23 -year -old sponsorship agreement and $ 300 million with the aspiration, but refused its $ 1 billion offer for denomination rights on the new arena. Intuit, the creator of QuickBooks, Turbotax and other widely used applications, paid $ 550 million.
In December 2022, the owner and vice -president of Clippers minorities, Dennis J. Wong – who was the Ballmer roommate in Harvard in the 1970s – invested $ 1.99 million in the company nine days before Leonard received a quarterly payment of $ 1.75 million from the aspiration, according to the documents obtained by athletics. The Clippers refused to comment on Wong’s investment.
In March 2023, Ballmer invested an additional $ 10 million, according to The Athletic. The investment contributed to a last round of aspiration funds at a time when it was almost in cash.
The NBA survey is now trying to determine whether the clippers knowingly violated a rule of the league to slide a player more money, they already paid the maximum authorized under the salary ceiling, which makes this situation different from what the league envisaged as a motivation for a team to bypass the salary ceiling.
The language in the NBA collective agreement describes the fold of the ceiling as cases where a team pays a player a salary lower than the market and compensates it by paying it another way in secret. In this way, the team would have more money under the ceiling to pay the other players.
The situation of the clippers differs because the money that Leonard is earned from aspiration was added to the maximum salary that he could be paid under the rules of wage ceiling and not a means of creating a ceiling space for the teammates.
Ballmer admitted to ESPN that he presented Leonard to aspiration leaders, but not before the team accepted a contract extension with Leonard and the sponsorship agreement of $ 330 million with the aspiration.
“We have finished with Kawhi, we finished with suction,” said Ballmer. “The transactions have all been locked and loaded. Then, they asked to be presented to Kawhi, and under the rules, we can present our sponsors to our athletes. We just can’t be involved. ”
Ballmer was categorical that he knew nothing about the details of the approval agreement, that, in fact, the teams are required to stay outside the negotiations between the players and the companies they approve.
Michael McCann, sports law expert and guest professor at Harvard, said that the survey will focus on the question of whether the investments in the aspiration by Ballmer were a counterpart for the company to turn and give millions of people.
Silver said the investigation must demonstrate that the Clippers knew or participated in Leonard’s agreement.
Some experts believe that Ballmer enters the probe with a strong image and could maintain it according to the outcome of the survey. “The fact that he did an excellent job, that he captivated fans and sponsors, is probably in his favor because it goes forward,” said David Carter, professor of sports in the USC and director of the sports business group.
Silver said that the NBA would return to its investment and approval rules following allegations involving Clippers, Ballmer and Leonard
Around the League, there is a conviction that if the NBA finds reprehensible acts, money will have to act.
“The only thing I hear regularly around the league is that they want the league to fall very difficult to dissuade the other teams from [circumventing the salary cap]”Said an NBA executive who asked anonymity to speak freely.” Because if there is no important penalty, other teams will start to do so, and a competitive advantage will simply be, the imbalance will be out of control. »»
Leonard joined the Clippers in July 2019 on a $ 103 million contract over three years after carrying out the Raptors of Toronto in the NBA title. The 6 -inch 7 -inch striker of Moreno Valley signed an extension of $ 176.3 million over four years in 2021, when the aspiration concluded his sponsorship agreement with the Clippers and Ballmer became a minority owner in the company.
After having signed an extension of $ 153 million over three years a year ago, Leonard was paid or will be under contract for a career salary of $ 375 million.
The NBA examined the allegations according to which the Clippers paid Leonard or his representative and uncle, Dennis Robertson, a parallel agreement when he joined the team in 2019. Said.
Neither Robertson nor Leonard’s agent responded to emails or SMS requesting comments on the approval arrangement with suction and the allegation reported in the star concerning Robertson.
The staff editor Broderick Turner contributed to this story.
