Clippers deny claims star forward Kawhi Leonard was paid $28m for job that didn’t exist | Los Angeles Clippers

The Clippers of Los Angeles and their owner, Steve Ballmer, denied allegations that the team’s star striker Kawhi Leonard was paid $ 28 million for a job that does not exist.

Journalist Pablo Torre presented the allegations of his podcast on Wednesday. Torre, citing legal documents, says that Ballmer used Leonard for a non -existent role in one of his businesses to bypass the NBA salary, which punishes the teams for having spent the wages of the players too much.

Torre claims that Ballmer has partially funded a now disappeared tree plant company called aspiration. This company would then have concluded an agreement of $ 28 million with KL2 Aspire, LLC, a company belonging to Leonard.

Torre says he could not find any evidence that Leonard had never done work for aspiration, and that there was a clause in the contract between the Aspire KL2 and the aspiration actually allowed Leonard to be paid even if he did not do a work. Another clause indicated that the agreement would be canceled if Leonard left the mowers. A former aspiration employee declared in Torre that he had heard the agreement with Leonard had been put in place to “bypass the salary ceiling”.

The Clippers and Ballmer denied allegations in a statement published in Torre. “Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers bypass the salary ceiling or engaged in a fault linked to the aspiration,” said the press release. “Any contrary assertion is proven to be false.”

The NBA investigated Leonard’s advisor Dennis Robertson in 2019 and found that the Clippers had not given the player any unacceptable advantage when they pursued it in the free agency. Leonard, an All-Star six times, joined the Clippers in July 2019 after leading the Raptors of Toronto to the NBA title.

The NBA has not yet commented on the story of Torre, but said in the past that it would reopen the investigation into Robertson if new evidence belonged.

Under the terms of the collective NBA Bergaish contract, the clippers could be sentenced to a fine of up to $ 4.5 million for a first offense if they were trying to bypass the salary ceiling. They could also be moored a choice of draft in the first round.