The Clippers Were Hit With the Harshest Punishment in NBA History, and It Could Get Worse

The Clippers are cheaters, or so the NBA declared in its two-page release revealing its findings after nearly a yearlong investigation into allegations of cap circumvention involving Los Angeles’s soon-to-be ex-superstar Kawhi Leonard.

The Clippers didn’t just break one rule, the NBA said. They broke at least five.

The Clippers are liars, or so suggested the investigators at Wachtell Lipton, who issued a 35-page summary of its investigation. Steve Ballmer’s whole “just making introductions” defense? A lie. Lawrence Frank’s “everyone knows the rules” comments? False. In its report, which involved 73 interviews with 60 people and 200,000 pages of documents, investigators say Gillian Zucker, the Clippers’ president of business operations, “offered inconsistent renditions of facts.”

The Clippers are cooked, or at least seem to be, after the NBA handed down its most significant cap circumvention punishment in decades. Los Angeles will forfeit five first-round picks and pay a fine of $30 million. Ballmer and Zucker are banned for a year while Frank will serve a suspension of six months.

In 2000, the NBA issued a similar penalty to the Timberwolves, when a digital trail revealed an illegal arrangement with Joe Smith.

They had the Wolves dead to rights back then. Clearly, they believe they have the Clippers that way now.

“The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver. “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.”

Let’s start with Ballmer, who in the aftermath of journalist Pablo Torre’s initial report ran to ESPN to claim he was duped. Of Aspiration, the now defunct green bank that funneled $28 million to Leonard for a no-show endorsement, Ballmer said, “They conned me.” Sure, the Clippers made the perfectly legal introduction between Leonard and Aspiration, Ballmer said, but that was the end of it.

“We cannot pay a player anything beyond what’s in his standard player contract,” Ballmer said, “and we cannot cause anybody else to pay the player what’s beyond their standard contract.”

Nonsense, claimed Wachtell. The Clippers initiated deals for Leonard with four companies: Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance. The deals with Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance resulted in $18 million into Leonard’s pockets, the report states. Within weeks (surprise!) each company had a multimillion-dollar consulting agreement with the Clippers.

Leonard’s deal with Aspiration was worse. The Clippers’ connection to that deal went far beyond an introduction, the report says. According to the report, the Clippers suggested to Aspiration that they enter into an endorsement agreement with Leonard, asked a business agent to help structure the agreement, conveyed proposed deal terms to that agent, provided input on the proposed deal, and remained in communication about the agreement thereafter with both Aspiration and Leonard’s representatives.

A lot more than connecting a couple of people via email.

In the report, the Clippers’ defenses are laughable. An example: In 2022, the Clippers cut a sustainability service deal with Aspiration and the Forum, the legendary Inglewood arena Ballmer bought in 2020. The idea was to “zero out” the Forum’s carbon emissions. As part of the agreement, the Clippers would pay Aspiration $7 million per year—or exactly what Aspiration was paying Leonard. When interviewed by investigators, Ballmer and Zucker claimed a consultant informed them that $28 million would be needed to offset the Forum’s carbon emissions, which the Clippers would pay over four years. The consultant, though, told investigators it was the Clippers who came up with the $28 million number.

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“Mr. Ballmer knowingly sought to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities and engaged in a significant act of facilitation through the Forum Agreement,” the report states. “Mr. Ballmer also failed to supervise his most senior businessperson while she systematically violated NBA rules, and more generally permitted a culture in his organization that allowed for the initiation, facilitation, inducement, and potential funding of multiple endorsement agreements between Mr. Leonard and team partners.”

That businessperson, Zucker, has been at the intersection of all of it. Zucker was the point person on all four of Leonard’s endorsement deals, the report says, and “directly initiated, facilitated, and induced each of Mr. Leonard’s endorsement agreements with those companies.” When Leonard’s uncle, Dennis Robertson, made demands, Zucker acted on them.

It was Robertson who dragged Frank down, too. Team officials are required to report when a player or his representative asks for impermissible benefits, and Robertson made a lot of them. Equity in the team. Housing. Access to private transportation, along with off-court income, such as endorsement deals. Frank was Robertson’s point person in the organization. And the one responsible for approving payments for impermissible expenses.

Leonard got dinged with a $700,000 fine, but make no mistake: He doesn’t care. The NBA ruling clears the way for the Clippers to finalize its deal to send Leonard to Toronto, where he will be rewarded with a multiyear extension. Final cost to the Clippers: An MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), $30 million and 10—yes, ten—first-round picks. That’s an AOL-Time Warner level disaster.

“I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family,” Leonard said in a statement. “As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate.”

Translation: Sorry, my bad, live and learn and YO TORONTO WHAT UP!

The Clippers, predictably, issued a blanket denial, vowing to fight the punishment. They called the investigation “heavily biased” and suggested witnesses were threatened. They whined about not being forewarned about the punishment and bragged about how much money ($50 million, according to the Clippers) Ballmer had spent assisting the investigation. They declared Ballmer has been “irreparably damaged” and repeatedly tried to diminish Torre’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting as the work of an irresponsible podcaster.

Silver didn’t buy it. He couldn’t buy it. Silver will be praised in some circles for acting decisively but the report didn’t leave him much choice. Cap circumvention is a cardinal sin, commensurate with point shaving or fighting. If Silver had let the Clippers off with a slap on the wrist it would have been open season on these types of side deals—and everyone inside the NBA knew it.

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Still, that Silver slapped Ballmer with a suspension was notable. For weeks, there has been a belief that whatever punishment the NBA leveled, Ballmer would escape it. Suspending the league’s richest owner meant a fight, rival executives mused, and Silver wouldn’t have the stomach for it.

But he did. He hit Ballmer in the one place that really hurt. Ballmer can (theoretically) rebuild the Clippers with fewer draft picks and he can find $30 million in his couch cushions. But a yearlong suspension is a dagger. No presence at games for one of the NBA’s most visible owners. No place on the Board of Governors. For a full season, Ballmer will watch the Clippers, a team he paid $2 billion for, on League Pass.

And it may not be over. Wachtell Lipton says it continues to receive relevant information, some as recently as this week. Torre has teased more episodes on the investigation, with the report stating that more information will likely surface. Indeed, the NBA just hit the Clippers with the worst punishment in league history. And it could get worse.

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