New Report Contradicts Important Steve Ballmer Claim About Kawhi Leonard No-Show Deal

Pablo Torre tweeted that he had "been circling" this particular detail.

A line in a Wall Street Journal article suggests the Clippers were the ones who asked Aspiration about a Kawhi Leonard deal. / Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

The Wall Street Journal published a long look at the Kawhi Leonard-Clippers-Aspiration story on Sunday. It was mostly a recap of the alleged cap circumvention story on the eve of the NBA season, but it did contain one nugget which the NBA and everyone paying attention should find interesting buried more than half-way into the story.

In a portion of the article with the subhead "Unusual deal," bylined writers Robert O'Connell and Harriet Ryan reveal what could be an important new detail about the story. Via WSJ:

In December 2021, Sanberg told a high-ranking Aspiration executive that the Clippers had approached him about doing a deal with Leonard, their injured star. The executive recalled Sanberg as saying: "This is important to the Clippers."

As noted by Torre, who was not mentioned until the final paragraphs of the article despite the fact that his reporting both uncovered and has driven this story since early September, this "directly contradicts what Steve Ballmer told ESPN."

But the most insane thing about this new WSJ story on Aspiration is that this massive scoop that I’ve been circling — which *directly contradicts what Steve Ballmer told ESPN* — is buried, like, halfway through.

This is big: https://t.co/PwsmCTZzoG pic.twitter.com/kTUrcFjs5g

— Pablo Torre 👀 (@PabloTorre) October 20, 2025

When this story originally broke in early September, Ballmer appeared on SportsCenter for an interview with Ramona Shelburne. During that interview he claimed that the Clippers did separate deals with Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration and then Aspiration asked the Clippers to make the introduction. Ballmer told Shelburne that there were texts previously shared with the Department of Justice showing this. You can watch that here:

If the Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Ballmer and the Clippers were the ones to approach Aspiration about the deal as Torre says he has "been circling," that's pretty big. People like Mark Cuban haven't been impressed by Torre's sources thus far, so maybe this strand will change that.

Stay tuned.

---

More NBA on Sports Illustrated

feed