{"id":116112,"date":"2025-09-03T16:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/116112\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T16:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:49:08","slug":"report-clippers-skirted-nba-salary-cap-with-kawhi-leonard-payment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/116112\/","title":{"rendered":"Report &#8211; Clippers skirted NBA salary cap with Kawhi Leonard payment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a data-clubhouse-guid=\"083a58a6-b849-3501-e67b-059290d12295\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/nba\/team\/_\/name\/lac\/la-clippers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">LA Clippers<\/a> reportedly have been accused of circumventing the NBA&#8217;s salary cap by paying $28 million to <a data-player-guid=\"87ff907c-c68c-a82d-1215-37e05d0c62ef\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/6450\/kawhi-leonard\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kawhi Leonard<\/a> for a &#8220;no-show job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pablo Torre, a podcaster and former ESPN contributor, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/pablofindsout\/status\/1963180670810767577\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">reported Wednesday<\/a> that the Clippers paid Leonard through a now-bankrupt company owned by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.<\/p>\n<p>Citing legal documents purportedly involving the tree-planting service Aspiration, Torre reported that Ballmer paid Leonard without requiring the Clippers star to do any marketing or endorsements for the company.<\/p>\n<p>An unnamed employee who purportedly worked for Aspiration told Torre that the payment to Leonard &#8220;was to circumvent the salary cap.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Clippers responded to the allegations with a statement to Torre, saying: &#8220;Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>ESPN has reached out to both the Clippers and the NBA for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Leonard, 34, signed a three-year, $153 million deal in January 2024 to remain under contract with the Clippers through the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The LA Clippers reportedly have been accused of circumventing the NBA&#8217;s salary cap by paying $28 million to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-116112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}