Цалингийн цэсний дүрмийг удаа дараа зөрчин тоглогчийн гаднаас авах орлогыг нэмэгдүүлэхэд оролцсон Лос Анжелес Клипперс багт NBA-гээс санхүүгийн торгууль ногдуулж, драфтын эрхүүдийг нь хаслаа.
NBA-гийн бие даасан мөрдөн шалгах ажиллагаагаар Лос Анжелес Клипперс баг Кавай Леонардын гэрээ болон түүний бизнесийн менежер Дэннис Робертсонтой холбоотой санхүүгийн ноцтой зөрчлүүд гаргасныг тогтоожээ. Тус баг Леонардыг багтай хамтран ажилладаг дөрвөн компаниас их хэмжээний орлого олоход нь тусалж, улмаар багийн цалингийн цэсний дүрмийг тойрч гарах замаар зөрчил гаргасан байна.
Энэхүү зөрчлийн улмаас Лос Анжелес Клипперс 2029-2033 оны драфтын эхний тойргийн нийт таван эрхээ алдаж, 30 сая ам.долларын торгууль төлөхөөр боллоо. Түүнчлэн багийн эзэн Стив Балмер нэг жилийн хугацаатай бүх төрлийн үйл ажиллагаанаас түдгэлзэж, багийн бизнесийн үйл ажиллагаа хариуцсан ерөнхийлөгч Гиллиан Зукер нэг жилийн цалингүй чөлөө, сагсан бөмбөгийн үйл ажиллагаа хариуцсан ерөнхийлөгч Лоуренс Фрэнк зургаан сарын цалингүй чөлөө авахаар болов.
Кавай Леонард өөрөө лигт 700,000 ам.долларын торгууль төлөх бол Дэннис Робертсоныг NBA-гийн баг болон тоглогчидтой бизнес эрхлэхийг таван жилийн хугацаатай хоригложээ. Мөн Лос Анжелес Клипперс баг ирэх таван жилийн хугацаанд лигийн хяналт дор үйл ажиллагаагаа явуулах юм.
Мөрдөн байцаалтын явцад тус баг Леонардын гэрээний нөхцөлүүд, тэр дундаа Аспирэйшн, Бойнго Вайрлес, Дактроникс болон Локтон Иншюранс компаниудтай холбоотой санхүүгийн гүйлгээг зохион байгуулахад идэвхтэй оролцсон нь илэрсэн байна. Тус компаниуд Леонардтай гэрээ байгуулсны хариуд Лос Анжелес Клипперсээс олон сая ам.долларын ивээн тэтгэгчийн гэрээ авч байсан нь тогтоогджээ.
NBA-гийн комиссар Адам Силвер тус багийн үйлдлийг лигийн өрсөлдөөний тэнцвэрт байдлыг алдагдуулсан, удирдлагын түвшний ноцтой зөрчил хэмээн тодорхойлсон байна. Лос Анжелес Клипперс багийн зүгээс уг дүгнэлтийг хүлээн зөвшөөрөхгүй байгаа ч лигийн зүгээс энэхүү шийтгэл нь эцсийн бөгөөд заавал биелүүлэх ёстой шийдвэр болохыг мэдэгджээ.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
The Los Angeles Clippers have been hit with one of the most severe punishments in NBA history after a year-long investigation concluded that the organization repeatedly violated salary-cap circumvention rules while helping Kawhi Leonard obtain tens of millions of dollars in outside income.
The NBA announced its findings, following an independent investigation conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The league determined that the Clippers engaged in what investigators described as a pattern of misconduct involving Leonard, his former business manager Dennis Robertson and four companies that were simultaneously doing business with the franchise.
The consequences are enormous.
The Clippers must forfeit five first-round draft picks, one in each draft from 2029 through 2033. The franchise was also fined $30 million. Owner Steve Ballmer has been suspended from all NBA and Clippers activities for one year, president of business operations Gillian Zucker has been suspended without pay for one year, and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank has been suspended without pay for six months. Leonard himself must pay the league $700,000, while Robertson has been banned from conducting business with NBA teams or affiliates on behalf of players or league personnel for five years. The Clippers will additionally operate under a league-supervised compliance and monitoring program for five years.
The punishment is the culmination of a scandal that became public almost exactly one year earlier.
On September 3, 2025, journalist Pablo Torre reported that Leonard had entered into a four-year agreement with sustainability company Aspiration that promised him $28 million in cash while allegedly requiring essentially no meaningful promotional work. Aspiration had significant financial ties to Ballmer and the Clippers: Ballmer personally invested $50 million in the company, while the Clippers entered into a massive sponsorship relationship with it. The team immediately denied that it had circumvented the salary cap.
Once the NBA began investigating, however, the scope expanded well beyond Aspiration.
Wachtell Lipton conducted 73 interviews involving 60 people and reviewed more than 200,000 pages of documents. Investigators ultimately examined Leonard’s relationships not only with Aspiration but also Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance.
The report found that the Clippers did considerably more than simply introduce Leonard to potential sponsors.
Investigators concluded that Clippers executives affirmatively initiated endorsement opportunities, participated in structuring deals, communicated financial terms and used the prospect of lucrative team business to encourage companies to pay Leonard. They also found that the Clippers covered hundreds of personal expenses for Leonard, members of his family and Robertson without properly deducting those amounts from Leonard’s compensation, as NBA rules required.
The roots of the problem, according to the report, went back to Leonard’s arrival in Los Angeles.
During Leonard’s highly anticipated 2019 free agency, Robertson requested benefits on Leonard’s behalf that were prohibited under the CBA, including team equity, housing, private transportation and guaranteed endorsement income. The NBA investigated those requests at the time, although the Clippers denied agreeing to provide them. That episode helped prompt the league to strengthen its enforcement rules, including a requirement that teams report improper requests even when they reject them.
The new investigation found that those requests did not stop after Leonard signed.
According to contemporaneous notes cited in the report, Robertson later communicated an expectation that the Clippers help Leonard secure approximately $10 million per year in outside income. In April 2020, Ballmer reportedly told Robertson that members of the organization were collectively working to help Leonard achieve his financial goals. Investigators found no evidence that Clippers officials reported Robertson’s demands to the league.
Within weeks, Zucker made introductions between Robertson and executives at Boingo, Daktronics and Lockton. Leonard ultimately signed endorsement agreements with all three companies worth a combined $18 million, and the entire amount was paid by August 2021.
The circumstances were highly unusual.
The deals were signed during the pandemic, carried relatively minor performance obligations, were never publicly announced and produced almost no documented activation involving Leonard. According to investigators, Leonard’s only confirmed work across those agreements consisted of one visit to a military base and signing memorabilia in another instance.
At roughly the same time, each of those companies entered into multimillion-dollar agreements with the Clippers.
Two were paid approximately $10 million each by the team before completing their endorsement agreements with Leonard. A third received a $2 million payment from the Clippers one day after making its first payment to Leonard. Investigators concluded that the companies had been induced to enter into the endorsement agreements because of the business they stood to receive from the Clippers.
The Daktronics arrangement became particularly damaging evidence.
Daktronics was bidding to provide scoreboard and signage technology for the Clippers’ new Intuit Dome. According to the report, a Clippers executive suggested that part of the company’s “spend back” commitment could take the form of an endorsement agreement with Leonard and specified terms of $3 million per year for two years. Daktronics believed refusing could threaten its chances of winning the arena contract. A year later, when the Clippers increased their spending with the company, investigators found that the team also pushed Daktronics to increase its payment to Leonard by another $2 million.
Then came Aspiration.
Shortly after Leonard re-signed with the Clippers in August 2021, Aspiration entered into a 23-year, $382.5 million sponsorship agreement with the franchise, a separate 23-year, $72 million sustainability agreement connected to Intuit Dome, and received Ballmer’s $50 million personal investment.
The investigation found that Zucker then helped initiate and structure a Leonard endorsement deal with Aspiration.
Internal communications showed a proposed arrangement initially worth $5 million in cash and $7 million in stock annually for four years. The final deal reversed those components at Leonard’s request, promising him $7 million in cash and $5 million in equity each year – $48 million in total value.
Experts consulted by investigators described that compensation as extraordinarily high given Leonard’s limited contractual obligations and relatively modest endorsement profile.
Aspiration executives themselves initially questioned the economics. Internal correspondence quoted in the report included executives wondering why they would commit $48 million to Leonard while already paying enormous sponsorship fees to the Clippers.
The answer, investigators found, involved business being sent back in Aspiration’s direction.
According to internal Aspiration communications, co-founder Joe Sanberg told colleagues that the Clippers wanted the Leonard deal and would increase payments to Aspiration to offset its cost. The company viewed the arrangement as potentially “cashflow neutral.”
That connection became particularly explicit in negotiations over a separate sustainability agreement involving the Forum.
Early drafts contemplated the Clippers paying Aspiration $7 million annually – exactly matching the annual cash portion of Leonard’s endorsement deal. Investigators said Ballmer and Zucker later claimed that number was based on an outside consultant’s estimate of what it would cost to offset the Forum’s carbon emissions. The consultant, however, told investigators the Clippers had actually supplied him with the $28 million budget figure, rather than the consultant independently arriving at it.
The situation reached a breaking point in March 2022.
Sanberg threatened to kill Leonard’s endorsement deal if the Forum agreement was not completed. Internal Clippers communications showed executives understood that threat and understood the relationship between the two transactions. Ballmer acknowledged to investigators that he knew Aspiration had conditioned the Leonard deal on the Clippers completing the Forum agreement. Ballmer nevertheless personally approved the Forum transaction in April. Investigators concluded that this alone constituted improper facilitation under NBA rules.
That finding also severely undermined Ballmer’s public defense from 2025.
After Torre’s original report, Ballmer said the Clippers had simply made an introduction and were not involved once Aspiration and Leonard began negotiations. Wachtell Lipton concluded that description was inaccurate with respect to Ballmer and “clearly false” with respect to Zucker, finding that Clippers personnel had participated in the proposed terms, structure and progress of the agreement.
The league also emphasized that this was not the Clippers’ first salary-cap circumvention violation.
In 2015, the NBA fined the franchise $250,000 for improperly attempting to facilitate an endorsement opportunity for DeAndre Jordan during his free agency. Ballmer said at the time that the circumvention had been inadvertent and promised that the organization would be diligent about CBA compliance.
The Leonard case therefore represented, in the NBA’s eyes, something much more serious than a technical mistake.
Commissioner Adam Silver said the league’s compensation structure is fundamental to competitive balance and called the Clippers’ violations “flagrant,” pointing specifically to institutional and leadership failures inside the franchise.
The loss of the five first-round picks may ultimately be the most damaging component.
Los Angeles will surrender first-rounders in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033. The Clippers already lacked their own first-round selections in 2027 and 2028 because of previous transactions, creating an extraordinary stretch in which the organization will have almost no normal first-round draft capital available to replenish an aging roster.
The 2029 pick being forfeited is the selection acquired from Indiana in the Ivica Zubac trade; it does not return to the Pacers. It simply disappears from the draft.
Leonard, notably, was not suspended and his playing contract was not voided. His punishment was limited to the $700,000 payment to the league.
The Clippers have rejected the findings, saying they “vehemently” disagree with the investigation and disputing the characterization of their actions. But the NBA announced that it and the NBPA have agreed that the penalties are final and binding. The investigators also stressed that their work is not necessarily finished; Wachtell Lipton continues receiving new information, and the league has reserved the right to take further action if warranted.
The scale of the punishment reflects the scale of what investigators believe occurred.
This was not a finding that one questionable sponsorship accidentally crossed a line. The NBA concluded that Clippers executives repeatedly helped generate off-court compensation for Leonard through four different companies, leveraged team business to make those arrangements possible, covered personal expenses, failed to disclose improper requests and continued doing so despite having been explicitly warned about the same section of the CBA before.
For the Clippers, the damage now extends far beyond $30 million.
Ballmer is sidelined for a year. Two of the most important executives in the organization are suspended. Five consecutive first-round selections are gone. The franchise will operate under NBA supervision for five years.
And a partnership that began in 2019 with the belief that Kawhi Leonard could finally transform the Clippers into champions has instead produced one of the most consequential disciplinary cases the NBA has ever seen.
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