In September 2025, sportswriter Pablo Torre revealed that the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) had avoided the league's salary cap when signing Kawhi Leonard by arranging no-show "endorsement" deals with affiliated firms to pay him tens of millions of dollars of off-court income, in violation of the NBA's collective bargaining agreement. Torre's reporting initially focused on the since-bankrupt financial services firm Aspiration; multiple additional no-show contracts were later uncovered.
After a yearlong investigation by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz concluded there had been significant violations of NBA salary cap circumvention rules, in September 2026, the NBA levied the largest punishment in league history on the Clippers: stripping the team of five first-round picks, fining the team $30 million, and issuing suspensions for owner Steve Ballmer, other team executives, and Leonard's adviser and uncle, Dennis Robertson. Leonard was fined $700,000.
Background Kawhi Leonard became an unrestricted free agent after the 2018–19 season when he declined his player option for the 2019–20 season with the Toronto Raptors, who had just defeated the Golden State Warriors to win their first championship in the 2019 NBA Finals. In the run-up to free agency, the Los Angeles Clippers made an extensive effort to woo him after missing out on the trade that saw him leave the San Antonio Spurs to join the Raptors in July 2018. An early indication of the team's apparent willingness to appease Leonard and other players to recruit them was the firing of commentator Bruce Bowen from game broadcaster Fox Sports West in August 2018 after he criticized Leonard's portrayal of his hamstring injury and handling by the Spurs. During the 2018–19 season, Clippers officials attended numerous Raptors games to scout him, with the presence of high-level executives and their attendance frequency noted among media outlets; they allegedly scouted fellow imminent free agent Kevin Durant in a similar manner. The Clippers had also reportedly explored the idea of purchasing Nike's portion of the rights to Leonard's "Klaw" logo after he signed a new sponsorship with New Balance, which Marc Stein of The New York Times noted would have likely violated salary cap rules but was a prominent example of the measures considered league-wide to recruit players with significantly beneficial performance influences like Leonard, with Stein pointing to the Raptors' success as support for this premise.
While Leonard desired to go the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2018 trade that sent him to the Raptors instead, that interest had seemingly diminished significantly by the time of his free agency in comparison to the Clippers, who reportedly became his preferred choice once LeBron James and Anthony Davis signed with the Lakers. Despite efforts from the Lakers to recruit Leonard to form a superteam, he ultimately signed with the Clippers for $103 million across three years in July 2019 after convincing Paul George to join the Clippers with him. As George was under contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Clippers acquired him in exchange for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Danilo Gallinari along with five first-round picks and two pick swaps in the NBA draft.
After Leonard made his decision, the NBA initiated an investigation into the Clippers when its office began receiving reports that his uncle, Dennis Robertson, had allegedly requested items that were well outside the NBA collective bargaining agreement's guidelines on permissible benefits during negotiations with the Clippers, Lakers, and Raptors. These requests included partial ownership of the team, access to a private plane at all times, a house, and an expectation of guaranteed money from off-court endorsements if Leonard joined the team. Lakers owner Jeanie Buss reportedly pointed out the illegality of these requests and refused to consider them, despite Robertson's insistence. Robertson also allegedly elaborated on these requests during negotiations with Raptors owner Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), asking for ownership stakes in the Toronto Maple Leafs and other MLSE-related entities, as well as an annual match of at least $10 million in sponsorship income without requiring any work; MLSE rejected these proposals.
The Athletic published a report on the requests and the investigation in December 2019, with Leonard denying the allegations at the time, according to USA Today. The NBA investigation found no evidence of the Clippers granting the requests, though league commissioner Adam Silver indicated that the league would reopen the case if it were to find relevant evidence. Despite that, the NBA decided to address the allegations by enacting new measures to strictly enforce tampering and salary cap circumvention rules during the NBA board of governors meeting in New York City in late September; penalties for violating such rules that were approved unanimously included maximum fines that were doubled to $10 million, loss of draft picks, and voiding of contracts. The league also enacted stricter regulations on communications from teams: interactions with sports agents were now required to be saved for one year, and the league was empowered to perform annual audits on five random teams concerning their interactions with agents and other teams.
Civil lawsuits In December 2020, the Clippers were sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Johnny Wilkes, the younger brother of former NBA player James Wilkes and an associate of Robertson who was teammates with him on the boys basketball squad at Susan Miller Dorsey High School before they both graduated in 1980. Wilkes claimed that he met team consultant Jerry West in April 2019 at Staples Center about potentially providing information to the team to bolster their chances of signing Leonard; he accused West of verbally agreeing to solicit his services in exchange for $2.5 million in compensation on June 28, then reneging on it after Leonard signed with the team. Wilkes described passing along information to West such as talking points that Leonard was believed to be seeking from executives in recruiting meetings and using boxing agent Sam Watson and sportscaster Jim Gray as intermediaries between him and West; he also described relaying to Robertson that he would receive a house in Southern California, a travel expense, and a $100 million marketing campaign for Leonard funded by Ballmer as directed by the Clippers and West. The NBA launched an investigation into the allegations after initial reporting on the lawsuit by TMZ. The Clippers and West denied the allegations, with an attorney representing them characterizing the lawsuit as an attempted extortion, while Leonard denied that Wilkes' actions influenced his selection of the team. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in August 2022, stating that Wilkes failed to prove any enforceable contract for compensation and that the statements made in the compensation conversation were "too vague and uncertain" to support such a claim; an appeal to the California Courts of Appeal was denied in January 2024.
The Clippers were sued again in Los Angeles County in October 2024, this time by former strength and conditioning coach Randy Shelton, who was fired in July 2023. Having previously worked with Leonard for the San Diego State Aztecs men's basketball team and maintained a relationship with him through his early career, Shelton alleged that he was hired by the Clippers in July 2019 to help attract Leonard and that assistant general manager Mark Hughes committed NBA tampering violations by soliciting him numerous times for information on Leonard's contractual obligations with the Spurs and his medical circumstances, with the alleged communication starting shortly after Leonard sustained an ankle injury in the 2017 NBA Western Conference finals; Shelton also alleged that the Clippers mismanaged Leonard's rehabilitation from an anterior cruciate ligament injury sustained in the 2021 NBA playoffs in an effort to stay competitive. The Clippers denied Shelton's claims as frivolous, characterizing the lawsuit as another attempted shakedown stemming from their denial of his request for millions of dollars in compensation after his employment contract expired in June 2024; they also accused him of offering unqualified medical advice to players during his employment with the team and stated that they would attempt to bring the case to arbitration per the terms of the contract signed by him in November 2021. The case was in arbitration as of September 2026.
Investigations
Initial Aspiration reports
On September 3, 2025, sportswriter Pablo Torre first reported on his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, that Kawhi Leonard had signed a $28 million, four-year endorsement deal in 2021 with Aspiration, a since-bankrupt fraudulent environmental company, in which team owner Steve Ballmer had invested $50 million. Torre had found evidence of the previously unreported contract because a limited liability corporation linked to Leonard was listed as a creditor in Aspiration's bankruptcy filings, and he conducted an anonymous inverview with an alleged former employee of Aspiration who claimed the contract was intended to violate the salary cap. As part of the "no-show" deal, Leonard was not required to perform any action other than remaining a Clipper player, and had never performed any endorsement activity for Aspiration. John Karalis of the Boston Sports Journal later reported that Leonard had additionally received $20 million in Aspiration stock, making the total promised compensation $48 million.
The Clippers immediately denied the allegations in team statements, calling them "absurd" and "flat out wrong." On September 4, Ballmer gave a televised interview to Ramona Shelburne on ESPN, claiming that the team had introduced Leonard to Aspiration after signing a $300 million sponsorship contract with the company (which is allowed under NBA rules) but had no further involvement in the eventual contract Leonard had formed with Aspiration. He additionally emphasized that he had been "conned" as an investor in the fraudulent company.
Torre released another podcast episode on September 11, revealing that in December 2022, Clippers co-chairman Dennis Wong had invested $1.9 million in Aspiration nine days before Leonard had been paid $1.75 million; this was despite the company facing financial difficulties at that point and having laid off 20% of its staff on that same day.
On September 29, Leonard denied that the endorsement deal was cheating, saying "none of us did...wrongdoing" and "I don't deal with conspiracies." He additionally stated that he "didn't think it was accurate" that he provided no endorsement services to Aspiration, and that he was still owed money from the company.
In March 2026, Pablo Torre won that year's Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for his work uncovering the scandal.
Daktronics and other allegations Throughout 2026, Torre published more undisclosed endorsement deals Leonard had with other companies, including a sponsorship with Intuit Dome scoreboard constructor Daktronics. A former Dome contractor described the deal as "1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap" and a way for "funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi."
NBA investigation The same day Torre released his initial podcast episode, the NBA announced it was investigating Torre's allegations, having hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, which had previously investigated former Clippers owner Donald Sterling.