Six-time All-NBA L.A. Clippers superstar small forward Kawhi Leonard doesn’t like to talk much.
Unfortunately, that may be working to his disadvantage this summer, as a series of bombshell reports have linked him to a bizarre sponsorship plot that seems to have paid him $48 million in endorsement money from fraudulent “tree-planting” Clippers sponsor Aspiration to do absolutely nothing.
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Neither Leonard nor his uncle Dennis Robertson, who handles his business affairs, have spoken out about the controversy. Clippers governor Steve Ballmer sure has, striving to distance himself and L.A. from the whole bloody affair in a conversation with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne.
Ballmer essentially denied that L.A. had anything to do with a scheme that appears to have compensated Leonard with bonus salary beyond the league’s luxury cap. Had the 6-foot-7 swingman done even a single promotion, he could have likely avoided much scrutiny. But such was not the case.
In a series of bombshell reports, Pablo Torre broke the story, first reporting that the tally was $28 million.
But it turns out the total intended payment was actually significantly more. Per John Karalis of Boston Sports, Leonard was given an addition $20 million in a side arrangement.
Torre himself later confirmed that sum.
During a damning subsequent podcast, Torre revealed that a $1.75 million payment from Aspiration was running late by several months, because there was a “huge freeze” around payments as the company floundered.
It turns out L.A. co-owner and vice chairman Dennis Wong, the only limited owner of the team (he possesses 1 percent of the franchise to Ballmer’s 99 percent), invested $1.99 million into the company just days before Leonard was compensated.
During a fresh episode of his “Road Trippin'” podcast, former 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers champion forward Channing Frye called out Torre for even investigating the situation at all, seemingly undercutting the possible severity of the whole infraction (the NBA’s richest owner, by far, subverts the notion of a punitive salary cap by paying his best player extra under the table).
“First of all, why you snitching? Who cares?” Frye asked.
Torre himself weighed in online.
“I don’t know which of these questions is worse [to be honest],” Torre wrote via his official X account.
When available, Leonard is still one of the league’s best players. The issue is that he’s often not available, and that his body usually fails him during the playoffs. He has only survived the postseason healthy twice since signing with the Clippers as a free agent in 2019.
Across 37 contests for the 50-32 Clippers in 2024-25, Leonard notched solid averages of 21.5 points on a .498/.411/.810 slash line, 5.9 boards, 3.1 dimes, 1.6 swipes, and 0.5 rejections.
If the Clippers are found to have been using this fraudulent sponsor as essentially a shell to launder payments to Leonard, that would reflect poorly on overall competitive NBA parity. The league’s punitive new CBA was designed to limit the richest teams from enjoying a significant cash flow advantage over its poorest clubs. If there’s a covert way for a squad like L.A. to sidestep that issue, that would be a major problem for both the NBA’s Board of Governors and its broadcasting partners.
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