When Steve Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $2bn in 2014, it was widely regarded as a coup for the NBA. Not only is Ballmer one of the richest men in the world – worth an estimated $152.7bn – but his passion and enthusiasm for the sport stood in stark contrast to the team’s embattled former owner. Donald Sterling, who bought the Clippers for $12.5m in 1981, was forced to sell after being handed a lifetime ban by the NBA in response to a series of racist comments.
Ballmer was the kind of owner NBA fans dream of, especially ones as downtrodden as the Clippers. He invested hundreds of millions of dollars towards improving the roster, growing the brand, and developing the new state-of-the-art Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. When it opened in 2024, it gave the Clippers a home of their own for the first time since moving from San Diego in 1984.
Ballmer’s Clippers constantly pushed the envelope, installing the first “halo” scoreboard, a wall of a supporters’ section strategically positioned to throw off opponents, a team with future Hall of Famers Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. Ballmer turned a laughingstock that had been living in the shadows of the crosstown rival Lakers into a relevant organization. But on Wednesday afternoon, after a year of allegations that Ballmer’s Clippers circumvented the NBA’s salary cap to pay superstar Leonard back in 2021, it was confirmed that Ballmer had taken it all a little bit too far.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver handed down the harshest punishment in league history, stripping the Clippers of five first-round draft picks and fining them $30m, while suspending Ballmer for a year. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.” NBA fans have been looking for clarity for a year. Last September, journalist Pablo Torre released the first in a series of podcast episodes alleging that Ballmer’s Clippers violated the salary cap circumvention rules designed to punish teams for spending too much on player salaries.
Citing legal documents, Torre claimed that Ballmer went under the table to sign Leonard to a no-show endorsement deal with Aspiration – a now-bankrupt sustainability services company that Ballmer invested in to pay Leonard $28m. The NBA-hired New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has been conducting an independent investigation into the allegations since then, saying on Wednesday that the Clippers violated “the circumvention rules in numerous independent ways by (i) affirmatively initiating off-court income opportunities between Mr Leonard and four different companies doing business with the team: Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance.” It also found that the Clippers facilitated the fulfillment of those endorsement agreements and induced the companies to enter into the agreements by offering and providing them with business from the Clippers, such as an Aspiration jersey patch and Daktronics scoreboard. The Clippers “vehemently reject the NBA’s punishments,” according to a statement released by the organization, calling them “the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.” Leonard, meanwhile, announced on Instagram that “I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle,” referring to his uncle and former business manager, Dennis Robertson, who solicited these agreements on Leonard’s behalf and was banned from the league for five years as a result.
Leonard appears to be on his way to Toronto, as the previously announced trade between the Clippers and Raptors is expected to go through within the next few days, according to ESPN. The Raptors will send Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two first-round picks, two second-round picks and a pick-swap to Los Angeles to reunite Leonard with the franchise he won an NBA championship with in 2019. The deal was put on hold in late July after the NBA announced that the Raptors had to commit in writing to assume any risk of penalties Leonard might incur from the investigation.
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