{"id":763547,"date":"2026-07-15T02:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T02:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/763547\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T02:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T02:40:11","slug":"latest-on-nbas-investigation-into-clippers-kawhi-leonard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/763547\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest On NBA’s Investigation Into Clippers, Kawhi Leonard"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of its probe\u00a0into Kawhi Leonard\u2019s and the Clippers\u2018 agreements with Aspiration, the NBA is investigating whether the Clippers\u00a0improperly covered expenses for Leonard while not being reimbursed, Mike Vorkunov reports for The Athletic<\/a>, citing anonymous sources.<\/p>\n

\"\"According to Vorkunov, Wachtell Lipton \u2013 the law firm leading the investigation \u2013 has also looked into whether Leonard had an endorsement deal with a separate company that has, to this point, gone unnoticed.<\/p>\n

The Clippers, who have been accused of circumventing the salary cap to pay Leonard beyond his NBA salary via a no-show endorsement deal with Aspiration (a team sponsor), have denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the team and owner Steve Ballmer were victims of the fraud perpetrated by co-founder Joe Sanberg, who has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.<\/p>\n

However, Vorkunov reports that some team executives around the league increasingly believe that the Clippers will face some sort of punishment from the NBA.<\/p>\n

While Vorkunov doesn\u2019t provide specifics on the potential improperly covered expenses and second endorsement deal that the NBA\u2019s investigators are looking into, he takes a deep dive into Leonard\u2019s and the Clippers\u2019 relationships with Aspiration, sharing some previously unreported details.<\/p>\n

According to Vorkunov, some former Aspiration employees have pushed back on the idea that Leonard\u2019s lucrative endorsement agreement with the company was always meant to be a no-show job. As he details, there were discussions about the usage of Leonard\u2019s likeness for promotional material for Aspiration, including one potential campaign inspired by Groot, a tree-based character from The Avengers franchise. The company made mock-ups of the concept, but the creative team was eventually told to stop pursuing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop thinking about Kawhi,\u201d one employee said they were told, according to Vorkunov. \u201cThis feels like a dead end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing ever came from it,\u201d another former employee said of the efforts to build a promotional campaign around Leonard. \u201cI\u2019m not sure why it died, whether it was on our end or his end or if we couldn\u2019t figure out a concept.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clippers, Leonard, and the Raptors are all heavily invested in the outcome of the league\u2019s investigation, given that Toronto has a pending trade agreement<\/a> in place to acquire the two-time Finals MVP. That deal won\u2019t be completed<\/a> until the NBA\u2019s probe wraps up in order to ensure that Toronto won\u2019t take on the risk of any penalty assessed to Leonard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of its probe\u00a0into Kawhi Leonard\u2019s and the Clippers\u2018 agreements with Aspiration, the NBA is investigating whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[11653,99,11652],"class_list":["post-763547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-sports","tag-steve-ballmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}