In his first public comments since allegations broke that the Clippers circumvented the salary cap to get more money to Kawhi Leonard through an endorsement deal with a fraudulent company, team owner Steve Ballmer defended himself and the organization as innocent, saying that they were victims of scammers, like many other investors.
During a 16-minute interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Ballmer said that while the Clippers made the introduction of Leonard to team sponsor Aspiration — a “green bank” company dealing in carbon emission credits that eventually went bankrupt, and its CEO admitted to $248 million in fraud — neither he nor the team had any idea what endorsement deal Leonard had with the company. Ballmer said he was one of the many investors scammed by the company, and that his $50 million investment in it gave him less than 3% of Aspiration, and he had no board seat or control.
“These are guys who committed fraud. How would I be able — look, they conned me. They conned me. 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.”
An explosive bit of reporting by the Pablo Torre Finds Out (PTFO) podcast linked Ballmer’s $50 million investment in Aspiration to a $28 million “no-show” endorsement contract Leonard got from the company, one where he literally did nothing to promote Aspiration in any form (there is no public record of him doing anything). Multiple Aspiration employees told PTFO that they were instructed not to question the Leonard endorsement deal, which existed to help the Clippers circumvent the salary cap.
Reporting by John Karalis of the Boston Sports Journal found Leonard later had a second deal with Aspiration for $20 million in stock options. While those stock options ultimately turned out to be worthless, at the time that would have brought Leonard’s endorsement compensation up to $48 million, close to how much Ballmer invested in Aspiration.
Ballmer made his case that he and the Clippers knew nothing about the relationship and contract details between Leonard and Aspiration, and they were not trying to circumvent the salary cap. Through their public statements and this interview, the Clippers have pushed back on the allegations and said they thought they had a deal with a legit green company — the Clippers and Aspiration had a $300 million partnership tied to making the then-under-construction Intuit Dome carbon neutral — and that they broke off that deal in 2023 when Aspiration didn’t live up to the contract. That was it. Ballmer said the company duped him and that neither he nor the Clippers knew any details about Leonard and his endorsement deal.
Ballmer said he welcomed the NBA’s investigation, adding that the Clippers have nothing to hide and will fully cooperate.
“I’d want the league to investigate, take it seriously…. Salary cap circumvention rules are important to the league, and I’d want the league to investigate,” Ballmer said.
While there may be no “smoking gun” email or direct evidence that Ballmer or anyone with the Clippers knew Leonard’s endorsement deal with Aspiration was a sham — there was that paper trail with the last serious cap circumvention case in the NBA, in 2000 with the Timberwolves and free agent Joe Smith — there is a tsunami of circumstantial evidence and coincidences that are hard to explain away.
While Ballmer answered questions on Thursday by a seasoned reporter in Shelburne, he and his public relations team made a massive mistake in not responding to PTFO initially when it asked for comments on the allegations before they aired.
It was Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban who went on a new edition of PTFO to defend Ballmer, saying essentially that everyone gets scammed at some point but that Ballmer was too smart to trust this company to pull off a cap circumvention scam.
“So the minute Aspiration was under investigation, I guarantee you, in the immortal words of Charles Barkley, I guarantee it that the NBA took a hard look at it. And not only that, that Ballmer, if he did something illicit and under the table and tried to, you know, um, work around the salary cap, then he’s got to be s******* bricks, right? Because at that point in time, he’s the dumbest human being on the planet because he trusted these scammers to do something he knew was against all NBA rules. A) I just don’t see that happening. B), the NBA would have found it easily. Three, and this alludes to the Steve Balmer can’t be that dumb thing. I’ve been scammed. Everybody’s scammable but in order for this to work, in my opinion, he has to trust that whole company. And at that point in time he trusted them enough to give them an investment at some level. But I don’t see how he would trust that company to keep probably his darkest secret as an NBA owner so that it wouldn’t get out. I just don’t see in any way, shape, or form that all those things could happen.”
Pablo Torre responded that he was on team s****** bricks — and that’s where a lot of fans and people around the league are, as well.
The NBA investigation into the case is underway. The NBA’s Board of Governors — the 30 NBA owners — meet next week in New York and this will be the hot topic. It already is around the league, as is what punishments the Clippers will ultimately face in this case.
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