{"id":879004,"date":"2026-09-03T23:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/879004\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T23:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:14:14","slug":"more-on-clippers-kawhi-leonard-nba-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/879004\/","title":{"rendered":"More On Clippers, Kawhi Leonard, NBA Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA\u2019s press release announcing the penalties assessed<\/a> to the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard<\/a> for violating the league\u2019s salary cap circumvention rules outlined the investigators\u2019 findings in broad strokes, but the full 36-page report<\/a> from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz provides a more in-depth \u2013 and more interesting \u2013 explanation of why the league came down so hard on the team.<\/p>\n

\"\"According to the Wachtell report, while the Clippers didn\u2019t comply with requests from then-business manager Dennis Robertson to facilitate off-court income when Leonard signed with the team in 2019, Robertson resumed pressuring the team within \u201cmonths,\u201d seeking the Clippers\u2019 help to secure roughly $10MM in additional annual income for the star forward. There\u2019s no evidence that the club asked Robertson to stop making those \u201cimproper\u201d requests or that they reported them to the NBA.<\/p>\n

In April 2020, when Robertson complained to Clippers management that those off-court endorsement deals weren\u2019t materializing, team owner Steve Ballmer told Robertson that Ballmer and the Clippers were \u201ccollective workers to try to help (Leonard) achieve his financial goals,\u201d according to notes kept by president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank. Robertson, who allegedly griped that president of business operations Gillian Zucker was making introductions for \u201cbulls\u2013t deals,\u201d sought a three-to-six month plan from the Clippers for introductions to companies that could offer more lucrative opportunities, per Frank\u2019s notes.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, during a span of six days in June 2020, Zucker sent a series of email \u201cintroductions\u201d connecting Robertson with three companies who were in the process of exploring business deals with the Clippers: Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton (an insurance company).<\/p>\n

While Zucker allegedly attempted to frame those emails as introductions being made at the request of the companies, investigators found that claim dubious, since there was no evidence supporting it and the idea that each of those three companies separately sought introductions with Leonard within a matter of days while the NBA season was suspended due to COVID-19 wasn\u2019t considered credible.<\/p>\n

By the end of August 2020, Leonard had endorsement deals in place with all three companies, and he had received payments from each of them by September of that year, according to Wachtell\u2019s report, which stated that he had earned $18MM from the three companies by August 2021.<\/p>\n

Wachtell\u2019s investigators laid out several reasons why the deals were \u201chighly unusual,\u201d including the fact that they were made during the COVID-19 pandemic when athlete endorsement deals had slowed down. Leonard was required to do little to no actual endorsement work, plus all three companies has never agreed to an endorsement deal of \u201cremotely the same financial magnitude\u201d with any other athlete.<\/p>\n

So why did those companies enter into agreements with Leonard? Investigators found that Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton each reached deals to do business with the Clippers within \u201cweeks\u201d of Zucker\u2019s email introductions in June. Either before or on the same day as Leonard\u2019s endorsement deals were finalized, \u201ceach company entered into a multi-million dollar consulting agreement\u201d with the Clippers, per Wachtell.<\/p>\n

Investigators added that Daktronics \u2013 which eventually manufactured the \u2018Halo Board\u2019 scoreboard at the Clippers\u2019 Intuit Dome, believed \u201cfailing to enter into a commercial relationship with Leonard could jeopardize its ability to win the bid for the Intuit Dome.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re curious about the other revelations from the Wachtell report but don\u2019t have time to read the entire 36-page document, Joe Pompliano of Huddle Up<\/a> has published an excellent summary of 25 key takeaways. It includes new details on how Zucker facilitated Leonard\u2019s endorsement deal with Aspiration, as well as an item on how Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg told executives at the company that \u201cthe Clippers are asking us to do this with Leonard.\u201d<\/p>\n

[RELATED: Clippers Call Leonard Investigation \u2018Witch Hunt,\u2019 Will Explore Legal Options<\/a>]<\/p>\n

[RELATED: Raptors-Clippers Trade Expected To Be Finalized \u2018In The Next Couple Of Days\u2019<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more on what Wednesday\u2019s announcement from the NBA means for the Clippers:<\/p>\n

As John Hollinger of The Athletic<\/a> details, the NBA essentially maxed out the penalties that the Collective Bargaining Agreement allows the league to impose on teams and executives as a result of salary cap circumvention. The maximum fine is $7.5MM, but because the NBA found endorsement deals with four separate companies, the league multiplied that figure by four to get to a $30MM fine for the Clippers. Additionally, the CBA doesn\u2019t permit the league to suspend executives or team owners for longer than one year, so Zucker and Ballmer each received the longest possible ban. Finally, while the Clippers technically controlled more than five five-round picks, the NBA took away their only five unprotected selections that had no \u201cstrings attached\u201d (such as swaps), Hollinger points out.
\nWhat does it mean for a team owner to be suspended? Joe Vardon of The Athletic<\/a> takes a closer look, writing that Ballmer won\u2019t be permitted to attend games or practices, can\u2019t go into the team\u2019s offices, and isn\u2019t allowed to influence personnel or business decisions. Ballmer also must select an interim governor while he\u2019s suspended \u2014 alternate governor Dennis Wong looks like the most obvious candidate to fill that role, Vardon notes.
\nAlthough Leonard said in a statement issued via his new agent Harrison Gaines and the NBPA on Wednesday that he had \u201cno knowledge of any intent on anyone\u2019s part to circumvent the salary cap,\u201d Wachtell investigators said in their report that he was involved in negotiations related to his endorsement deal with Aspiration, having requested to swap the amounts of the cash and equity components included in that agreement, tweets<\/a> Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic.
\nWithin an extended look at what the penalties mean for the Clippers, ESPN\u2019s Brian Windhorst<\/a> says general manager Trent Redden appears likely to run the team\u2019s front office during Frank\u2019s six-month suspension.
\nMeanwhile, Bobby Marks of ESPN<\/a> notes that there\u2019s a precedent for the Clippers to potentially regain one or more of their forfeited draft picks \u2014 after the Timberwolves were fined five first-round picks for circumventing the cap with Joe Smith back in 2000, they had two of those first-rounders returned to them by the league three years later. Chris Mannix of SI observes (via Twitter<\/a>) that Minnesota didn\u2019t fight the NBA\u2019s ruling and essentially got those picks back for \u201cgood behavior,\u201d whereas the Clippers have stated their intent to challenge the league\u2019s decision in this case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA\u2019s press release announcing the penalties assessed to the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard for violating the league\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,448126,448127,1175,10546,590,85,82014,448128],"class_list":["post-879004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dennis-wong","tag-gillian-zucker","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-lawrence-frank","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-steve-ballmer","tag-trent-redden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879004","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=879004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}