Лос Анжелес Клипперс болон Кавай Леонардын асуудлаарх мөрдөн байцаалт үргэлжилж байна

The investigation into whether the LA Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer circumvented the NBA salary cap using sponsors to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard “found no evidence” to prove the allegations, according to a new report at ESPN. The league office quickly pushed back hard on that report.

The investigation and report from the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz are essentially done, both the Clippers and the league office have them, and the sides had started settlement talks, a league source told NBC Sports, something published in the ESPN report.

The core of ESPN’s report is that sources told them no hard evidence was found.

The NBA has found no evidence showing LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap… Instead, the NBA is focused on whether the team’s introduction of Leonard to team sponsors constitutes a violation of the league’s rules prohibiting salary cap circumvention, two of the sources said. The league is examining whether the Clippers are guilty of “failure to supervise” employees, though it’s unclear what specific rule the team would have violated or what the penalties would be, two of the sources said.

The league office pushed back fast and hard on this.

What is the evidence?

At the very least, there is a mountain of oddly timed, circumstantial evidence — plus comments from employees at Aspiration — about the questionable endorsement deals. In practice, the contracts appear to be no-shows Leonard had with multiple endorsers who also had ties to the Clippers.

The Clippers and Ballmer have vehemently denied any wrongdoing from the start.

It started with Aspiration, a former Clippers sponsor and green bank company that has since gone bankrupt, something made public on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast (which has continued to push and drive this story). Aspiration’s founder, Joe Sanberg, was convicted of defrauding investors and sentenced to 14 months in prison. Clippers owner Ballmer made a $50 million investment in Aspiration not long before Leonard signed a $28 million endorsement deal with the company (Ballmer and other Clippers executives made investments in the company, again, some oddly timed). Multiple former Aspiration employees told Torre this was a “no-show” endorsement designed to funnel more money to Leonard and circumvent the NBA salary cap. There is no evidence Leonard did any promotional work for the company.

“At the heart of this investigation are Joe Sanberg and Aspiration. We did not funnel money to Kawhi Leonard through Aspiration,” the Clippers said in a statement to NBC Sports recently. “Like many sophisticated investors, financial institutions, and business partners, we were victims of a fraud initiated by Sanberg, who has been convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison.”

The Aspiration part of the discussion was followed up by a report from Pablo Torre Finds Out that Leonard had an endorsement deal with Daktronics, the makers of the Halo board inside the Inuit Dome. This was odd because Daktronics does not do consumer-facing advertising and had never had a celebrity endorser previously.

ESPN’s report says “at least three other companies that also had deals with the Clippers.”

However, the report also says, “the league has presented no evidence that Ballmer funneled money to Leonard.”

Which begs the question: how are we defining “evidence?”

Ballmer is too smart to have signed a memo or said something on record implicating himself. If the bar is that kind of “smoking gun” evidence, then nobody’s going to have it.

However, the section of the Collective Bargaining Agreement dealing with salary cap circumvention allows for Silver to find a team “guilty” (or worthy of some punishments) based on having enough circumstantial evidence to prove the case. To many, that feels like the situation here: There are too many companies, too many odd coincidences, too many lower-level people who told Pablo Torre that that’s what was happening to dismiss it.

Any punishment that Silver might hand down would have to go before a neutral arbitrator, who would review the evidence and decide if the consequences and punishments involved fit that evidence. Any decision by the arbitrator can — and almost certainly would be — appealed. That is why reports say this situation could drag out into 2027.

All that while, a proposed trade of Kawhi Leonard to Toronto for Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick sits on hold waiting for a resolution. If there isn’t one before training camp starts, this gets messy.

Which is why talk of a settlement has increased in recent weeks, it would not be up for arbitration because all the parties would agree.

Is a settlement coming?

“This [investigation] needs to be wrapped up before the beginning of next season,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said a month ago in Las Vegas. “It’s going on longer than I would have hoped, there’s no question about that.”

ESPN’s latest report confirms that settlement talks are taking place.

In recent days, both sides have been negotiating a resolution to the investigation, the people said… at times [those talks] have been “spirited,” one source said.

What could be under negotiation?

• Fine for Clippers. While this is almost certainly part of any final deal, what fine could the league give that would make Ballmer — the ninth-richest person in the world, worth an estimated $148 billion, according to Forbes — even blink?
• Suspension for Ballmer. This is likely where Ballmer and the Clippers would push back on the evidence, saying there is no direct link.
• Clippers lose draft picks. This also seems almost certain to be part of any punishment by the league or in a settlement. It likely would be multiple first-round picks, and it’s not a coincidence that in trading players like James Harden in the past year, the Clippers sought out other teams’ first-round picks, ones the league can’t take away (because they’re not the Clippers’ own picks).
• Fine and/or suspension for Leonard. The possibility of this suspension is what is holding up the Leonard-to-Toronto trade. The NBPA (players’ union) would likely push back hard on any punishment for Leonard, especially if it costs him games. He may end up just needing to pay back some of the money he got from these endorsements.

As for when all this wraps up? Who knows. NBA training camps start to open at the end of September and that would be the first big deadline, because by then something has to happen with the Leonard trade. Either it goes through or is called off. A lot of other league business, for example a potential Bennedict Mathurin extension in Los Angeles, also feels held up by this trade being on hold. Things need to happen.

One thing is certain: Whatever ultimately is the end product of the investigation — especially if there is a settlement, like many around the league suspect will happen — there will be a lot of people unhappy. People inside and outside the league who feel the Clippers got off easy and that this sets a bad precedent. There may not be the pound of flesh many want to see.