Under investigation into allegations of impermissible payments to skirt salary cap rules, Kawhi Leonard also had \u2060an undisclosed multimillion-dollar deal with Daktronics, the company that designed the video board at the Los Angeles Clippers\u2019 home arena, the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out\u00a0reported on Thursday.<\/p>\n
An unnamed source told the podcast that the sponsorship was \u201c1000% a way to circumvent the \u200bsalary cap. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back \u200cto Kawhi.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither \u200cthe NBA nor the Clippers had responded to requests \u200bfor comment as of Thursday night, according to The Athletic and ESPN.<\/p>\n
It was unknown when the reported sponsorship deal began, but according to a spokesperson \u2060for Daktronics, Leonard is not under contract with the company, per the report.<\/p>\n
Daktronics designed \u201cThe Halo \u2060Board\u201d inside the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California,\u00a0the Clippers\u2019 $2 billion arena that opened two years ago, and has produced video boards \u200bfor several other NBA teams, \u2060according to its website.<\/p>\n
Last September, the NBA said it was looking into the Clippers for potential violations tied \u2060to an allegation they \u200bused a company, banking firm Aspiration, to pay Leonard $28 \u200bmillion. Reportedly nothing was asked of Leonard in the \u201cno-show job\u201d \u200bthat \u200cleft open concern it was a loophole to pad the amount of guaranteed money the Clippers offered when they signed him as a free agent.<\/p>\n
Aspiration went bankrupt last year, and its cofounder wound up \u200cin prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges involving $248 million.<\/p>\n
The Toronto Raptors, who lost Leonard in free agency after winning the 2019 NBA championship, agreed in principle to a trade five weeks ago to bring him back. The deal hasn\u2019t been completed, \u200band \u200bthe NBA made it clear Toronto \u201cwould assume the risk of \u200bany potential outcome of the investigation impacting Kawhi.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn light of this,\u201d the Raptors \u2060stated, \u201cwe will wait until the league\u2019s investigation is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Clippers, who have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing related to Leonard\u2019s contract, also confirmed the deal was on hold.<\/p>\n
Leonard, 35, is a two-time NBA Finals MVP, having \u200bwon the award in title runs with the San Antonio Spurs (2014) and Toronto.<\/p>\n
Leonard averaged 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 65 games for the Clippers last season. A seven-time All-Star and two-time Defensive Player of the Year, he has made the NBA\u2019s All-Defensive Team seven times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under investigation into allegations of impermissible payments to skirt salary cap rules, Kawhi Leonard also had \u2060an undisclosed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,1175,7236,590,85],"class_list":["post-846573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846573","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=846573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}