{"id":117970,"date":"2025-09-04T00:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T00:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117970\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T00:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T00:02:08","slug":"nba-says-it-will-open-investigation-into-report-on-kawhi-leonard-deal-nbc-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117970\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA says it will open investigation into report on Kawhi Leonard deal \u2013 NBC Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA said Wednesday that it will launch an investigation into a report of a multi-million endorsement deal between the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard and a California-based sustainability services company.<\/p>\n

At issue are allegations that the endorsement deal allowed the Clippers to circumvent league salary cap rules, something the Clippers strongly denied in a statement released after the report on the “Pablo Torre Finds Out<\/a>” podcast. <\/p>\n

The probe will focus on ties between Leonard, the Clippers and a company called Aspiration Fund Adviser, LLC, which filed for bankruptcy this year. The company listed several creditors at that time<\/a>, among them the Clippers and a company called KL2 Aspire LLC that was owed $7 million.<\/p>\n

The announcement of the NBA investigation follows a report Wednesday by Torre, who obtained a copy of the endorsement agreement between Aspiration and KL2 Aspire.<\/p>\n

“We are aware of this morning\u2019s media report regarding the LA Clippers and are commencing an investigation,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Leonard is listed as the manager of KL2 Aspire LLC in California filings. KL are his initials, and 2 is his jersey number. Emails sent to his listed representatives seeking comment Wednesday were not immediately returned.<\/p>\n

The Clippers denied that any league rules were broken. <\/p>\n

\u201cNeither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration,\u201d the Clippers said in a statement. \u201cAny contrary assertion is provably false: The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago, during the 2022-23 season, when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer made a $50 million investment<\/a> in Aspiration, and the company and the team announced a $300 million partnership in September 2021. That was about a month after Leonard signed a four-year, $176 million extension with the Clippers.<\/p>\n

Aspiration\u2019s co-founder, Joseph Sanberg, agreed to plead guilty last month after facing federal charges of wire fraud. Prosecutors said he defrauded investors and lenders out of $248 million, adding that \u201cAspiration\u2019s financial statements were inaccurate and reflected much higher revenue than the company in fact received.\u201d<\/p>\n

Torre reported that the endorsement agreement between Aspiration and KL2 Aspire called for Leonard to be paid $7 million annually for four years. Given that timetable, Leonard still would have been owed the final $7 million at the time of Aspiration\u2019s bankruptcy filing.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that Leonard did anything to publicly endorse Aspiration.<\/p>\n

Leonard joined the Clippers in July 2019 on a three-year, $103-million contract. He re-signed for four years in 2021 and signed a three-year extension last year.<\/p>\n

The league \u2014 which previously looked into claims that Leonard’s representatives asked for certain things that would be considered cap circumventions when he was a free agent several years ago \u2014 can issue stiff penalties if cap rules are found to have been broken by a team, including a fine of up to $7.5 million, the voiding of contracts and the forfeiture of future draft picks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA said Wednesday that it will launch an investigation into a report of a multi-million endorsement deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,1527,459,82],"class_list":["post-117970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}