NBA Finds Clippers Violated Salary Cap, Bans Ballmer for a Year

The NBA announced historic sanctions against the LA Clippers on September 3, 2026, concluding that owner Steve Ballmer orchestrated an illegal salary-cap circumvention scheme centered on All-Star guard Kawhi Leonard. Ballmer faces a one-year suspension from the league, according to Front Office Sports. The team was fined $30 million and stripped of five first-round draft picks beginning in 2029.

The punishment follows a 13-month investigation by lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, initiated after podcaster Pablo Torre reported on September 3, 2025, that Ballmer had arranged a no-show job for Leonard with environmental start-up Aspiration. The investigation examined how the Clippers routed compensation to Leonard through four companies: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance. The 35-page report released by the NBA found that Ballmer, team president Gillian Zucker, and unidentified team personnel played major roles in the scheme.

Leonard had agreed to a three-year, $103 million contract with the Clippers in July 2019. Over six days in early June 2020, Zucker made a series of email introductions connecting Leonard's representatives to Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton, written in a manner aimed at giving the appearance of complying with circumvention rules, per the report. The following month, Leonard signed multiyear endorsement deals with two companies on the same day. Within a month, he signed a similar agreement with the third company. In total, those three deals were worth $18 million, with payments completed by August 2021, according to the report. None of these agreements were publicly announced, the report states, defeating the foundational purpose of an endorsement deal.

All three companies also signed multimillion-dollar agreements with the Clippers, and the money the team paid to the companies may have been made principally to fund Leonard's endorsement deals, the report concluded. The investigation found that Lockton refused to cooperate, while Boingo initially agreed to cooperate but supplied faulty information. Aspiration and Daktronics were helpful to investigators.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement: "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. 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."

The Clippers announced late Wednesday, per Front Office Sports, that they "vehemently reject" the report's conclusions, which they say are "the result of a heavily biased investigation." The team said it plans to "vigorously challenge" the NBA sanctions "through every avenue available to us." In a statement to Silver, the Clippers accused the commissioner of breaking his promises of a fair investigation, stating: "Suffice it to say that you would not want to be treated the way that Mr. Ballmer and Clippers personnel have been treated during the past year." The team claimed that if the league spent $50 million investigating any team, it would find similar instances of team personnel making introductions to sponsors and vendors in response to player requests. The Clippers also asserted that the NBA's counsel has acknowledged the league does not believe there was an agreement between the Clippers and Aspiration to funnel money to Leonard.

The NBA said the investigation continues to receive relevant information and could take further action if new material emerges. The league and union agreed to the punishments, preventing an appeal.