{"id":138972,"date":"2025-09-13T00:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T00:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/138972\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T00:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T00:48:09","slug":"la-clippers-salary-cap-scandal-steve-balmer-and-kawhi-leonard-video-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/138972\/","title":{"rendered":"LA Clippers salary cap scandal, Steve Balmer and Kawhi Leonard, video, highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested nearly $10 million (AU$15 million) in March 2023 into the company Aspiration, which allegedly gave Kawhi Leonard a no-show deal that the NBA is now investigating<\/a>, The Athletic reported Friday.<\/p>\n

This investment came 18 months following Ballmer\u2019s $50 million (AU$75 million) investment in Aspiration, which is behind the league\u2019s probe into the Clippers to see if Leonard was given a side deal to circumvent the salary cap.<\/p>\n

Pablo Torre first reported on September 3 about the alleged four-year, $28 million (AU$42 million) no-show endorsement deal that Leonard received.<\/p>\n

Ballmer\u2019s 2023 investment came as Aspiration was desperate for funding, and came just three months after a $1.99 million (AU$3 million) investment from Dennis Wong, who serves as vice chairman of the Clippers, The Athletic reported.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Wong\u2019s investment, the financial technology company made a $1.75 million (AU$2.6 million) payment to Leonard, according to Torre.<\/p>\n

Watch live coverage of NBL 2025-26 season with ESPN on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1 ><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ballmer\u2019s initial investment in December 2021 came three months after the company signed a deal worth over $300 million (AU$451 million) with the Clippers that made them a founding sponsor of the team\u2019s new arena.<\/p>\n

Leonard, 34, then signed a four-year deal with Aspiration seven months later, with the company struggling to make its quarterly payments to the six-time All-Star.<\/p>\n

NBA commissioner Adam Silver confirmed on Wednesday that the league will be investigating Ballmer but will not dish out punishment unless there is hard evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be reluctant to act if there was a mere appearance of impropriety. I think the goal of a full investigation is to find if there really was impropriety,\u201d Silver said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause also in a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would want anybody else who is in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in right now, or Kawhi Leonard, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people are making allegations against me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard.Source: AP<\/p>\n

Ballmer, during an appearance on \u2018SportsCenter\u2019 last week, said he was conned by Aspiration, whose co-founder, Joe Sanberg, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud for defrauding investors and lenders of more than $248 million (AU$373 million), the Justice Department announced in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. They conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up, and they conned me at this stage. I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi,\u201d Ballmer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI reviewed, my staff reviewed primarily fraudulent financials,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, should I have sniffed it out? Maybe I feel embarrassed and kind of silly that I didn\u2019t sniff it out, but I didn\u2019t. I made the investment. A lot of other smart investors didn\u2019t sniff it out either.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on the New York Post<\/a> and was reproduced with permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested nearly $10 million (AU$15 million) in March 2023 into the company Aspiration, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-138972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138972","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=138972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}