On Wednesday, after a gathering with all of the NBA house owners, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver sounded cautious, affected person and slightly bit zen in regards to the investigation into the Clippers making an attempt to bypass the wage cap with group sponsor Aspiration. “I’m an enormous believer in due course of and equity, and we have to now let the investigation run its course,” Silver mentioned. He mentioned he needed to see “substantial proof” of the Clippers’ wrongdoing and that the burden of proof was on the league.
On Thursday, new reporting from Pablo Torre and the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast (which initially broke the story) makes it more durable to imagine that the Clippers group knew nothing. Right here’s how the brand new reporting breaks down, with some background context added.
• In 2021, Kawhi Leonard signed a four-year, $28 million endorsement cope with Aspiration, a “inexperienced financial institution” firm dealing in carbon credit (the corporate has since gone bankrupt, and its CEO pled responsible to bilking $248 million from buyers). The best way this endorsement paid out was $7 million a yr, or quarterly funds of $1.75 million. On the crux of this controversy is the truth that Leonard did nothing for Aspiration to earn this cash — no appearances, no advertising, not even a social media put up. This was a “no-show” job. Workers with Aspiration mentioned they had been instructed to not query the Leonard contract and that this was to assist the Clippers circumvent the wage cap.
• Clippers proprietor Steve Ballmer had invested $50 million personally in Aspiration again in 2021 (previous to the Leonard endorsement contract), and it had turn out to be a $300 million sponsor of the Clippers. Ballmer and the Clippers have mentioned that whereas they launched Leonard and Aspiration — as is permitted below league guidelines — that they had no particulars about his endorsement deal, and that the Clippers ended their relationship with Aspiration in 2023 after it defaulted on their obligations. Ballmer instructed ESPN, “I used to be duped” by Aspiration (as had been many different buyers).
• The newest PTFO reporting focuses on the ultimate months of 2022: In September of that yr, Aspiration missed a quarterly $1.75 million cost to Leonard because the failing firm was coming aside on the seams. This had Dennis Robertson — “Uncle Dennis,” Leonard enterprise supervisor and uncle who had requested the Raptors for no-show endorsements throughout free company in 2019, and requested the Lakers and Clippers for far more like a bit of the group, a house, and use of a airplane — hounding Aspiration for the cash Leonard was owed (which flowed right into a specifically fashioned LLC for this endorsement cash).
• Enter Dennis J. Wong — the vice chairman of the Clippers, a person who owns 1% of the group (Ballmer owns the opposite 99%). In accordance with Aspiration financial institution information, on Dec. 6, 2022, Aspiration obtained a $1.99 million wire from Wong’s funding LLP. That got here at a time when the corporate was hemorrhaging cash, was in default and was not funding, firm staff instructed Torre. All of that was public and disclosed, and Wong ought to have identified about it.
• On Dec. 15, Leonard bought his $1.75 million fall quarterly cost from Aspiration. That very same day, Aspiration laid off 10% of its remaining workforce.
• A finance govt with Aspiration mentioned this to Torre about Wong’s funding: “It’s not a rational funding that somebody would make. So it is rather surprising to me that $2 million was made as an funding by Dennis Wong, who in my texts is recognized because the ‘Clippers’ and Steve ‘Ballmer’s accomplice,’ every week earlier than $1.75 million was paid to Kawhi.”
The NBA has employed an outdoor legislation agency to deal with its investigation into Aspiration, the Clippers and the endorsement cope with Leonard. Whereas the court docket of public opinion is in overdrive, Silver needs the league’s investigation to be accomplished earlier than he and the opposite house owners focus on any punishment for the Clippers — and Silver needed proof past the circumstantial.
“We and our investigators take a look at the totality of the proof… I’d be reluctant to behave if there was form of a mere look of impropriety,” Silver mentioned. “I feel that the purpose of a full investigation is to search out out if there actually was impropriety.”
Ballmer and the Clippers can once more declare believable deniability right here: Wong made a small funding in an organization the place his daughter labored to assist prop them up, neither he nor the group knew something about late funds to Leonard or something to do with the endorsement deal. If Silver is holding out for a paper path — an e mail the place Ballmer or Wong be certain that cash will get to Lonard and Uncle Dennis — that isn’t going to exist, Ballmer is simply too good to have achieved so (there was this sort of paper path in 2000 when the league got here down laborious on the Timberwolves for circumventing the wage cap with Joe Smith). The Clippers can argue that that is one thing Aspiration and Uncle Dennis cooked up and so they knew nothing.
Nonetheless, the tsunami of circumstantial proof and the timing of all of it — together with Wong’s funding — is tough to disregard and brush apart as nothing. It’s going to be troublesome for the opposite house owners — who’re sad with the thought that the richest of them circumvented the cap, giving the league a black eye — to say nothing occurred right here.
This has turn out to be a narrative that isn’t going away and can carry into the beginning of the NBA season, a darkish cloud the league is not going to be blissful about.
