By Ryan Ottiger, Staff Writer

            On Sept. 2, 2025, journalist Pablo Torre accused the Los Angeles Clippers of funneling millions of dollars to star player Kawhi Leonard, circumventing the NBA salary cap. A year and a day later, an NBA investigation confirmed wrongdoing and did not hold back its punishments.

The saga began in 2019 with Leonard deciding to join the Clippers on a three-year, $103 million deal. He was coming off an NBA championship, Finals MVP and a legitimate claim to being the best player in the world with the Toronto Raptors.

Months after joining the team, questions arose about Leonard’s uncle and adviser, Dennis Robertson, who was said to have wanted “improper benefits” for Leonard with the Clippers. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver affirmed that if relevant evidence surfaced in the future, another investigation would ensue.

In Sept. 2021, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer announced a $300 million-plus partnership with Aspiration through 2043, a sustainability company co-founded by Andrei Cherny and Joseph Sanberg.

Less than a year later, in April 2022, Leonard agreed to a secret $28 million deal with Aspiration, allowing himself to circumvent the salary cap and cash in on the extra millions.

Aspiration also received a $2 million investment from an investment company run by Clippers Vice Chairman Dennis Wong.

In March 2023, Ballmer invested $10 million into Aspiration in a desperate attempt to raise money amid its struggles to maintain itself as a company.

Two years later, co-founder Sanberg was arrested for fraud and generating hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investments to pose as a successful sustainability company, misleading the public.

Now, after a new NBA investigation stirred up by Pablo Torre, the NBA confirmed the entire story, with the Clippers strongly denying misconduct.

The punishment entails a $30 million fine to the Clippers, a loss of their five first-round picks over the next five years, a one-year ban for Ballmer and a $700,000 fine for Leonard. Leonard’s uncle and former adviser, Robertson, has a five-year ban from NBA business. The Clippers’ president of business operations, Gillian Zucker, also received a one-year ban, while president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank received a six-month ban.

The Clippers now face a challenge similar to when they traded the league’s current back-to-back MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, along with five first-round picks back in 2019 for Paul George, in the sense that now they lost the five first-round picks they had until 2034. This inevitably puts more pressure on this year’s fifth pick in the NBA Draft, Keaton Wagler, as well as Darius Garland to keep the franchise afloat while they figure out how to gain back draft capital and reshape their future.

If there’s any winner in this situation, it is Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors. Now that the investigation is complete, Leonard is officially back with the Toronto Raptors. Leonard was traded for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick and two second-round picks earlier this summer, with the deal being put on pause to investigate the situation, escaping with a $700,000 fine.

As for the Clippers, their circumvention of the NBA’s salary cap rules will now stretch the team thin and leave them with serious questions going forward.

They could package some of their valuable role players and exchange them for future draft picks, focusing on rebuilding over the next few seasons. They could also try to compete with the core of Garland, Ingram, Wagler and their role players.

 What began years ago as a conquest to rival the NBA’s best with Leonard in 2020 has now devolved into a huge loss in future draft assets, bans and suspensions from organization leaders and question marks for what the franchise should do in the coming years.