Count me among the cynics who thought that Steve Ballmer was simply too rich, too friendly with NBA commissioner Adam Silver, and had too many lawyers to face serious punishment for his team’s blatant attempts to circumvent the salary cap with a series of shady endorsement deals for Kawhi Leonard. The punishment Silver and the NBA handed down Wednesday is serious indeed.
It’s a huge penalty for the Clippers, who will forfeit their first-round picks from 2029 to 2033. That’s almost as much as they gave up to get Paul George! The Clippers’ 2027 and 2028 firsts are already encumbered by trades, so they’ll lose the next five, leaving them with only the Indiana Pacers’ pick in 2029 and the Toronto Raptors’ draft picks in 2031 and 2033.
Leonard’s own punishment was only a $700K fine, so presumably the Raptors will no longer object to completing their earlier deal for The Claw, and he can move on to no-show deals with Tim Horton’s, Canada Dry, and Molson’s.
The NBA’s nearly year-long investigation “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization.” Those violations included:
● Affirmatively initiating off-court income opportunities between Mr. Leonard and four companies doing business with the team: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance;
● Facilitating endorsement agreements between these companies and Mr. Leonard;
● Inducing the companies to enter into these agreements by offering them business from the team;
● Paying personal expenses on behalf of Mr. Leonard and his representatives; and
● Failing to report improper solicitations for off-court income opportunities made on Mr. Leonard’s behalf through his then-business manager, Dennis Robertson.
Ballmer and the Clippers had loudly proclaimed their innocence as to any wrongdoing in Leonard’s $28M endorsement deal with Aspiration, the now-defunct tree-planting/climate credits company that was a big Clippers sponsor. That deal apparently didn’t require Leonard to do anything to reap tens of millions, whether it was to post about the company or plant one single tree, and it was never announced publicly, which seems contrary to the idea of celebrity endorsements.
Journalist Pablo Torre has been all over the story since it began, also pointing out the questionable endorsement deal Leonard had with Daktronics, a scoreboard manufacturer that didn’t have any other celebrity endorsements — since they make gigantic scoreboard displays. The NBA’s investigation, conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, also found previously unreported illegal deals with Boingo Wireless and Lockton Insurance worth $18M in total.
Yes, Kawhi wasn’t doing ads for them either, and none of them was reported publicly. The three companies became paid consultants for the Clippers at the same time as they reached endorsement deals with Leonard, with two of them receiving immediate payments of $10M in “consulting fees.” Why they needed consultation with Boingo Wireless remains unexplained.
Not only did the Clippers have to forfeit five first-round picks, the same punishment given to the Minnesota Timberwolves a quarter century ago for making an illegal secret deal with Joe Smith, Ballmer and the Clippers head of business operations, Gillian Zucker, are suspended for a year. President of basketball operations Lawrence Frank was suspended for six months. Zucker and Frank’s suspensions are unpaid, but Ballmer will surely be able to find them some endorsement opportunities to make up for the lost income.
Now the Clippers are rebuilding around an uninspiring young core of Darius Garland, Brandon Ingram, and No. 5 pick Keaton Wagler, but precious little else. It’s an open question whether head coach Ty Lue will want to hang around, though he’s reportedly signed for three more seasons. The Clippers will also have to motivate themselves without the NBA’s most enthusiastic and sweatiest owner sitting courtside, relying instead on THE WALL, a Clipper-fans-only section behind one basket that honestly might have trouble filling its seats.
Who are the big winners? Adam Silver, who stood up to the richest owner in the league and came down with an old-school punishment worthy of David Stern, if not Kennesaw Mountain Landis himself. There’s Pablo Torre, who led the way on the story and was vindicated tremendously by the league’s ruling. There’s the Raptors, who get Leonard without his contract being encumbered. And there’s Leonard himself, who seems to have escaped cheaply by only drawing a $700K fine for taking what may have been tens of millionsof dollars.
Who are the losers? Steve Ballmer is the biggest one. We’d say the Clippers, but this is just one in a series of embarrassments that have defined the franchise since it moved out of Buffalo. Clippers fans don’t expect good things.
Mark Cuban, one of the most vocal Ballmer defenders, has to be considered a loser, as do Ramona Shelburne, Don Van Atta, and Baxter Holmes of ESPN, who confidently reported that the NBA had nothing on the Clippers just two weeks ago. Shelburne also hosted a softball interview with Ballmer a year ago on ESPN that was embarrassing at the time and even more so in hindsight.
The investigators called Ballmer’s statements during that interview that the Clippers “weren’t involved” in Leonard’s Aspiration deal “inaccurate (at best) with respect to Mr. Ballmer and clearly false with respect to Ms. Zucker.”
To his credit, Cuban took the L Wednesday.
Who did not take the L? The Clippers, who continue to deny any wrongdoing and threaten to sic their lawyers on the NBA.
Do we know why the NBA is biased against the Clippers? We’re sure the Clippers will explain, just like they’ll provide a reasonable explanation for team sponsors secretly giving millions of dollars to the superstar to do nothing as they’re also receiving massive consulting fees from the team.
The evidence is more damning than anyone realized, and the punishment is worse than anyone expected. Maybe not all billionaires believe that they can do whatever they want, but the billionaire who owns the Clippers clearly did. For the Warriors, their richest division rival has been seriously weakened.
Ultimately, Adam Silver was Steph Curry in this investigation, and Steve Ballmer was Chris Paul.
