San Antonio Spurs center Luke Kornet (7) defends as LA Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard (2) carries the ball at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio on Friday, March 6, 2026. The Spurs defeated the Clippers 116-112. (Katina Zentz/San Antonio Express-News)
The verdict is in regarding the Kawhi Leonard saga, and the results are not good for the All-Star forward or his soon-to-be former team. A months-long independent investigation found the Los Angeles Clippers illegally circumvented the NBA salary cap when they facilitated outside endorsement deals with a collection of team-friendly sponsors, the league announced Wednesday. Those sponsors were Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance. The resulting penalties are staggeringly stiff. Due to what the league called a pattern of misconduct uncovered in the investigation, headed by the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the NBA has suspended team owner Steve Ballmer from all league and team activities for a year. He has also been fined $30 million. The Clippers will lose a whopping five first-round draft picks, one each in the 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033 NBA Drafts. Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank has been suspended for six months, with president of business operations Gillian Zucker drawing a one-year ban. Leonard, who the Clippers agreed to trade to Toronto earlier this summer, has been fined $700,000. Dennis Robertson, Leonard's uncle and business manager, has been banned from conducting business or otherwise engaging in NBA teams and their affiliates for a period of five years. "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," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. "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." Wednesday's resolution would appear to clear the legal hurdles needed to finalize the Clippers' swap with Toronto, which the league put on hold pending the outcome of the investigation. Originally a first-round pick of the Spurs in 2011, Leonard made two All-Star teams in San Antonio and helped lead the team to the 2014 NBA Championship, being named Finals MVP in the process. He was traded to Toronto in the summer of summer of 2018 in an acrimonious spilt that bestowed persona non grata status upon Leonard and his uncle/business manager among some segments of Spurs fans. In his lone season with the Raptors, Leonard won another NBA championship and earned another Finals MVP trophy before signing a free-agent deal with the Clippers in July 2019. In September of 2021, Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration, a green banking company. At the same time, the Clippers announced a reported $300 million partnership with Aspiration. The following April, Leonard was awarded a separate $28 million endorsement deal, setting off alarm bells at the league office. What looked at first like an unusually lucrative endorsement deal would soon become the centerpiece of one of the most consequential salary-cap investigations in NBA history. Come Wednesday, it was the Clippers' - and Leonard's - turn to pay up. Subscribe There’s more to San Antonio with the Express-News. Subscribe today for just 25¢. This article originally published at NBA hits Clippers with heavy sanctions in Kawhi Leonard case.