NBA Finds Clippers Violated Salary Cap, Bans Ballmer for a Year

The NBA released its findings in the Clippers–Kawhi Leonard case Wednesday afternoon, saying the team illegally circumvented the league’s salary cap by funneling millions of dollars to Leonard through third parties.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has been banned from the league for a year, and the team has been stripped of five first-round picks and fined $30 million. The draft penalties begin in 2029.

On Sept. 3, 2025, podcaster Pablo Torre reported Ballmer had arranged a “no-show” job for Leonard with since-failed environmental start-up Aspiration worth millions of dollars. The NBA announced its investigation the same day.

The league said its investigation—conducted by lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz—found the Clippers used four companies to route payments to Leonard off the books. The companies were Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance. Lockton’s role in the scandal has not been previously reported.

“The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”

Other punishments include:

• A one-year suspension for Gillian Zucker, the team’s president of business operations, who the league says lied to investigators and was “primarily and directly culpable for the impermissible endorsement arrangements.”
• A six-month suspension for president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank.
• A $700,000 fine for Leonard.
• A five-year NBA ban for Leonard’s uncle, Dennis Robertson, who the league found pressured the Clippers into the outside deals.

There will be no appeal, as the league and union agreed to the punishments, and the law firm “continues to receive information relevant to the investigation.”

However, the Clippers said late Wednesday that they “vehemently reject” the conclusions of the report, which it says “are the result of a heavily biased investigation.” The team said it plans to “vigorously challenge” the NBA sanctions “through every avenue available to us.”

In a statement to Silver on Wednesday, the team accused the commissioner of breaking his promises of a fair investigation. “Suffice it to say that you would not want to be treated the way that Mr. Ballmer and Clippers personnel have been treated during the past year,” the statement reads.

The letter continues: “We are confident that if the league spent $50 million investigating any team, it would find plenty of instances of team personnel making introductions to both sponsors and vendors in response to player requests.”

It also claims that the NBA’s counsel “has acknowledged in our discussions that the league does not believe there was an agreement between the Clippers and Aspiration to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard.”

In addition to a press release outlining the penalties, the NBA released a 35-page summary of the findings put together by Wachtell Lipton that goes into significant detail about the investigation’s findings.

Contrary to Ballmer’s public comments that the Clippers didn’t break any rules, the law firm found that he, Zucker, and Frank played major roles in circumventing the salary cap to get Leonard improperly paid.

That includes connecting him with Aspiration, Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton and “facilitating the consummation of endorsement agreements.” In some cases, the Clippers went as far as developing and communicating specific deal terms, the report says.

Leonard had agreed to a three-year, $103 million deal with the Clippers in July 2019. Over the course of six days in early June 2020, Zucker made a series of email introductions connecting Robertson to Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton. Those emails were written in a way aimed at giving the “appearance of complying with circumvention rules,” the report says. 

The following month, Leonard signed multiyear, multimillion-dollar endorsement deals with two of the companies on the same day. Within a month, he had signed a similar deal with the third. In total, those three deals were worth $18 million, money which he was paid by August 2021.

“None of these agreements were publicly announced, defeating the foundational purpose of an endorsement agreement: to obtain associational benefits of the company’s relationship with the endorser,” the report says.

All three companies also signed multimillion-dollar agreements with the Clippers, and the money the team paid to the companies “may in fact have been made principally to fund the endorsement deals with Mr. Leonard,” according to the report.

The report hits back at a “novel theory” pushed by Ballmer and the team in the media: that NBA rules allow “affirmative” introductions of players to business partners to help generate off-court income if that is requested by players.

“The Clippers offered no persuasive explanation for how this theory comports with the clear language of the circumvention rules,” the report says. 

The Clippers and their lawyers at times stifled the investigation by delaying their responses to requests for information and operating in an “adversarial or obfuscatory manner that slowed investigators’ ability to gather the facts.”

The report says Lockton refused to cooperate, while Boingo initially said it would cooperate but then supplied faulty information, while Aspiration and Daktronics were helpful.

Zucker made “several statements” that were inconsistent with documents, other witness statements, and the “broader chronology of events.” She also claimed she couldn’t remember details about “important issues” and blamed subordinates. Frank, meanwhile, was open in his discussions with investigators and “took responsibility for the actions of subordinates.” He was “generally consistent across his interviews.”

The law firm interviewed 60 people, including Ballmer, Zucker, Frank, Leonard, Robertson, Aspiration founder Joseph Sanberg, and “people connected to” Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton. The investigators also reviewed more than 200,000 pages of documents.

Although this report has been released, the law firm says there may be more to come. 

“Given the scope of this matter and its complexity, there is always more that could be done—and, considering the public’s interest in this matter, more information will likely surface over time,” the report said. “Investigators continue to receive information relevant to the subjects discussed in this report, including as recently as this week. Investigators will supplement their findings as appropriate.”

Earlier this summer, the Clippers and Raptors agreed to a trade to send Leonard to Toronto; the trade had been on hold for the league’s findings. In a statement Wednesday, Leonard said he was moving to Toronto with a “clean slate” and blamed “lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle.” He said he had “no knowledge” of any illegal scheme to pay him extra money.

On Wednesday, Daktronics acting CFO Howard Atkins said the federal Securities and Exchange Commission was seeking information about its relationship with Leonard. Daktronics is a publicly traded company.

Torre did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. He won a Pulitzer for his Clippers reporting in May.