The NBA on Wednesday said it had suspended Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer for one year as part of a broad array of sanctions on the basketball team and its two most senior executives for violating the league’s salary cap circumvention rules related to star player Kawhi Leonard and four companies that did business with the team.
Ballmer “knowingly” sought to help Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities” worth millions of dollars, and approved a business deal that Ballmer “knew was a precondition for Aspiration Partners to enter into an endorsement agreement with Mr. Leonard, and for his failure to create conditions under which his organization abided by the NBA’s circumvention rules,” the league said.
The Clippers were also fined $30 million, and will forfeit five first-round picks in the NBA draft, one each year beginning with the 2029 draft. The Clippers and its personnel will be subject to a compliance and monitoring program overseen by the league office for five years, according to the NBA.
Clippers President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker was suspended without pay for one year, and President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank was suspended without pay for six months. Zucker and Frank were “primarily and directly culpable” for this organization’s misconduct, an investigation found.
The league said that an investigation of the Clippers by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations” by the organization, which had previously violated salary cap circumvention rules.
“The three individuals most responsible for the Clippers’ rule-breaking are Mr. Ballmer, Ms. Zucker, and Mr. Frank,” a 36-page report by Wachtell, Lipton said.
The report comes nearly a year to the day after the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out began a series of episodes alleging that the Clippers and Ballmer violated salary cap circumvention rules in dealings with Aspiration Partners, which had a four-year, $28 million endorsement agreement with Leonard. The podcast reported that the agreement was never publicly announced, and that Leonard did not perform any services under it.
In a statement, the Clippers said “we vehemently reject the NBA’s findings,” adding that, “We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process.”
In a summary of its findings, Wachtell, Lipton said the organization’s violations included “initiating off-court income opportunities between Mr. Leonard and four companies doing business with the team: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance,” and facilitating endorsement deals between those companies and Leonard.
The Clippers also induced those companies to enter into deals with Leonard by offering them business from the team, paid personal expenses for Leonard and his representatives, and failed “to report improper solicitations for off-court income opportunities made on Mr. Leonard’s behalf through his then-business manager, Dennis Robertson,” the summary said. Robertson is Leonard’s uncle.
Leonard was ordered to pay the league $700,000 in connection with his own violations, which included pressuring the team to help him obtain off-court income opportunities and failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses.
And the NBA banned Robertson from conducting business or otherwise engaging with the league’s teams and their affiliates for players or personnel for five years.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, in a statement on the findings, said, “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.”
“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,” Silver said.
In its own statement, the Clippers said the report’s findings “are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.”
“What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure [its] fairness and accuracy,” the team said.
“For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence.”
