After nearly a year of digging, the NBA reportedly came up empty on the biggest allegation hanging over the Clippers: that owner Steve Ballmer used team sponsors as a pass-through to secretly pay Kawhi Leonard and dodge the salary cap. That's the headline out of ESPN's latest report, and it spread fast.
The story traces back to a bombshell Pablo Torre report from last year alleging Leonard signed a $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration Partners in 2022 that required little to no actual work — a so-called "no-show job." Ballmer had put $50 million into Aspiration in 2021 and the company signed a $300 million sponsorship deal with the Clippers around the same time, making it the "founding partner" of the then-new Intuit Dome. Aspiration has since gone bankrupt, and its co-founder was sentenced to 14 years in prison for wire fraud unrelated to the Leonard deal. Law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has spent 11 months investigating on the league's behalf.
Reaction to the "no evidence" headline split fast between vindication for the Clippers and pure disbelief. Bobby Marks, who covers the salary cap for a living, pointed out the raw numbers don't exactly scream a guy who got secretly overpaid — Leonard's five-year haul with the Clippers from 2019-20 through 2023-24 actually came in below what he reportedly could have earned in a return to Toronto over that same stretch.
The first 5 years of Kawhi Leonard 2019-20 to 2023-24 What he could have earned in Toronto 5 years: $190M What Leonard earned with the LA Clippers 5 years: $195M
That didn't stop the internet from reacting with a collective "wow" anyway, given how loud the original circumvention allegations were. But the bigger wrinkle is that "no evidence of funneled sponsor money" isn't the same as "cleared." The NBA is reportedly still examining a narrower question — whether the Clippers broke rules simply by connecting Leonard with team sponsors in the first place, separate from any direct payment scheme.
The NBA is still looking into whether the Clippers violated any rules by connecting Kawhi Leonard with team sponsors.
Then the league itself threw cold water on the whole narrative. NBA spokesman Mike Bass put out a statement blasting ESPN's report as containing "numerous and significant inaccuracies," and pointedly noted the league declined to cooperate with the story at all. Bass said the actual results of the investigation will come out only once it's finished — which reads like the NBA wanting the last word, not ESPN.
So the story isn't really resolved so much as it's now a fight over the story itself. Commissioner Adam Silver has said he wants this wrapped up before the 2026-27 season tips off, and the league and Clippers are reportedly negotiating a resolution behind the scenes. Until that actually lands, every leak — no matter how it's framed — is going to get picked apart by both sides.