From the moment Pablo Torre strung together the names Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers, and Aspiration with the phrases “no-show endorsement deal,” “salary-cap circumvention,” and of course “tree-planting,” the biggest question around the NBA was not whether a franchise was flagrantly cheating—that seemed obvious—but whether the NBA would actually do anything about it.
From the moment the scandal broke, almost exactly one year ago, cynicism reigned.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer was presumed to be too wealthy, too powerful, too important to the league to be punished. The evidence presented by Torre on his podcast, though compelling, was too circumstantial. And commissioner Adam Silver? Too cautious, too lawyerly, too deferential to his billionaire owners to punish the richest of them all.
“It’s a huge test” of Silver, a former team executive told The Ringer last September.
“The integrity of the league is at stake,” a current team executive said at the time.
Well, that thundering whoosh you heard Wednesday afternoon was the sound of countless team executives, coaches, and staffers across the NBA unleashing a massive sigh of relief. After 12 long months, and a slow drip of damning new details and revelations, Ballmer and the Clippers were at last ruled guilty. And Silver hammered them. Hard.
- Five first-round picks, forfeited.
- Ballmer, suspended one year and fined $30 million.
- Lawrence Frank, the team’s top basketball executive, suspended six months. Gillian Zucker, the team’s top business exec, suspended a year.
- And Leonard, for his part, ordered to pay $700,000 in restitution.
The punishment was staggering. Unprecedented. Historic. But most of all, reassuring. Faith had been restored around the league, cynicism defeated.
“The overwhelming reaction of the executives I talked to today after the verdict came down was of relief,” said the same former team executive who was referenced above. “All of us who are involved in the game and care about the league … want to protect the integrity of the game. And I think that that was at risk here.”
The league’s investigation, conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, found that the Clippers had facilitated endorsement deals—worth tens of millions—between Leonard and four companies with ties to the franchise, in violation of the NBA’s salary-cap rules. (Leonard was not required to do anything for the money.)
The truth is that NBA teams skirt the rules all the time. They tamper with players on other teams. They embellish injuries and shut down stars to lose games and enhance their draft position. And yes, sometimes they find creative ways to get players a little extra cash outside of the salary-cap rules. But never on the scale of what the Clippers did for Leonard, a two-time Finals MVP who has earned more than $375 million in NBA contracts, according to Spotrac.
“No,” another team executive told The Ringer last year, “everyone is not funneling $48 million under the table through sham sponsorships.”
So every team official, at every level, on every team, was monitoring the investigation and awaiting a verdict with some mix of curiosity, concern, and self-interest. A severe punishment for the Clippers would mean business as usual—an affirmation of league norms. But if Silver had gone soft—say, a fine and a couple of forfeited second-round picks—all hell would have broken loose.
“It was just going to open up the floodgates,” said the former team executive, “because if [the Clippers’ scheme] was allowed, what would prevent teams from doing similar things, or even more egregious things, in the future?”
That sentiment was shared by a half dozen league insiders who spoke with The Ringer on Wednesday.
“If you underdo this one, it really would have emboldened the many other teams that have toed the line there,” said a Western Conference team executive.
“This should put everyone on notice now and clean some things up,” said an Eastern Conference team executive. “Other teams did some smaller things in the past to give players benefits, but not on that scale.”
If there was any disappointment from rival execs, it was that Leonard himself was barely punished for his part in the cap-circumvention scheme. It was Leonard’s uncle Dennis Robertson who reportedly “solicited” (i.e., demanded) all of the illegal benefits. But Leonard’s restitution amounted to a tiny fraction of the millions he reaped in under-the-table deals. The punishment for Robertson—a five-year ban on “conducting business or otherwise engaging with NBA teams”—is almost comical and probably irrelevant, given that Robertson is not a certified agent and has no other known NBA clients.
“How does Kawhi get off this easy?” said another Eastern Conference exec. “Kawhi is a fully fledged adult who makes decisions for themselves. … ‘Oh, I was misdirected by my own uncle’? Are you freaking kidding me? What are you, 15?”
Another team official called it “a slap on the wrist for Kawhi” and “too soft.” “If you worry about this emboldening anyone, it’s players and their agents asking for dumb shit.”
The league had the option to suspend Leonard or even void his contract, which has one year and $50 million remaining. But the players association would have vigorously contested any such measures, and that’s a battle the league surely didn’t want or need.
With the verdict in, the Clippers are now free to trade Leonard back to the Toronto Raptors—the team he spurned in 2019 after leading it to a championship—under an agreement the teams made months ago. So Leonard will once again turn a middling team into a plausible contender, while his former team will again be left with the wreckage of his actions.
And oh, what a pile of wreckage he’s leaving. The Clippers might not have a first-round pick under their control for the next seven years, as a result of previous trade agreements and the five forfeited picks. (They could, however, have four firsts in that time, just not necessarily their own.)
“They are very screwed,” said the first Eastern Conference executive. “They got some picks in recent deals, but losing all those [forfeited picks] are killer.”
“It’s crippling,” said the Western Conference exec.
The Clippers are now left with two oft-injured, ball-dominant former All-Stars (Darius Garland and Brandon Ingram), a lottery pick in rookie Keaton Wagler, and a raft of role players. And things could get much worse. Will players like Garland and Wagler want to stay for the long term if the franchise can’t surround them with sufficient talent? Will marquee free agents even consider the Clippers, knowing how hamstrung they are? Will the Clippers have to trade one of their best players just to replenish their draft capital?
“It’s going to impact the Clippers for the next decade,” said the former exec. “The roster is not loaded with young talent now, and I have a hard time seeing how it’s going to be even league average over the next decade or so.”
The ironies here are inescapable. For decades, the Clippers were a laughingstock under the perennially cheap (and racist) Donald Sterling. It was Silver’s banishment of Sterling in 2014 that paved the way for Ballmer to buy the franchise and inject some respectability for the first time. And it was Leonard who in 2019 became the first free agent superstar in history to willingly choose the Clippers as his employer.
Of course, Leonard came with a list of demands—chief among them that L.A. had to trade for his fellow star Paul George, then with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Clippers did so, in a deal that cost them five first-round picks, two swaps, and a future MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander).
It took all the draft capital the Clippers had to acquire Leonard, to buy a little respectability and hope for a long-suffering franchise. Seven years later, Leonard is costing them all of their draft capital again—along with all the respectability and hope they worked so hard for.
It’s a truly bleak moment for Ballmer’s Clippers, who might not be relevant again for years to come. But for the moment, at least, faith in the league is restored.
