New details have emerged regarding the ongoing saga surrounding Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard’s dealings with the now-bankrupt company Aspiration.
According to Robert O’Connell and Harriet Ryan of the Wall Street Journal (via journalist Pablo Torre), a high-ranking Aspiration executive said that the company’s co-founder Joe Sanberg said the Clippers approached him about doing a deal with Leonard, calling it “important” to them.
After Torre reported during an episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out that Leonard signed a separate endorsement deal with Aspiration for $28 million following his $176.3 million max extension with the Clippers, the NBA opened an investigation into whether the team attempted to circumvent the salary cap by arranging the deal between the two parties. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
“These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. They conned me,” Ballmer told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up, and they conned me at this stage. I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi.”
However, as Torre pointed out, if it was the Clippers who approached Aspiration about the deal with Leonard, Ballmer was wrong to claim that he was “conned.”
The Clippers released a statement last month alleging that Ballmer was among the victims of Aspiration’s wider fraud:
Leonard has two years remaining on his contract with the Clippers, and he’s set to make $50 million this season, per Spotrac. If the NBA determines that the team violated salary cap rules by arranging a side deal with an outside company, the Clippers and Leonard could be facing some severe penalties.
