The Clippers’ owner, Steve Ballmer, has finally broken his silence, days after he was accused of colluding with Kawhi Leonard and a tree-planting company named Aspiration to commit fraud and circumvent the NBA’s salary cap rules.
Earlier, the LA Clippers had issued a statement saying Ballmer is innocent, but now the former Microsoft CEO appeared for an interview with ESPN’s NBA Insider Ramona Shelbourne to address the matter himself.
“Just upfront, I want to say one thing very clearly. We, the Clippers, have abided by the salary cap circumvention rules because that’s the right thing to do,” said Ballmer in the beginning. He later went on to explain the rules regarding this situation.
“I mean, we can have sponsors. The players can do endorsement contracts. We can do sponsorship deals with the same companies that they do endorsement contracts with. We cannot have any involvement in their negotiation with the companies that sponsor them. We didn’t in this case, and we never have.”
“Okay, we know what the rules are. Was there an exception made in terms of our relationship with Aspiration? Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” said Ballmer categorically denying all allegations.
Ballmer went on to recall why he got into business with Aspiration in the first place. When he was building the Intuit Dome, he wanted to make it carbon neutral. Therefore, after reading Aspiration’s business plan in a sponsorship meeting, Ballmer decided to invest in the company to make his project carbon neutral.
“Remember, they defrauded me. They defrauded many other investors, much bigger than me. But I read the business plan and said, ‘Hey, this makes sense to support them, to support us.’ We invested in the company. So all was fine.”
“I had no control over this company. That is important. Actually, under the salary cap rules, I owned less than 3% of the company. Some investors put in a lot more money than I did. I had no board seat. I had no control. Heck, it was a fraudulent company. It’s possible nobody had any control.”
Shelbourne went on to inquire into the evidence they have, as the Clippers’ initial statement, they claimed the accusations were “provably false.” Ballmer responded by recalling that they had locked in the extension with Kawhi Leonard long before they were even introduced to Aspiration.
In August 2021, Leonard signed his four-year, $176.3 million extension with the Clippers. Just a month later, the Clippers announced Aspiration as a team sponsor in a $330 million deal in September 2021. The first introduction between Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration happened in November 2021 via email, as per Ballmer in the interview.
He claims that the Justice Department had verified the point of their first contact as a part of their investigation earlier. Subsequently, Leonard registered his company, KL2 Aspire, and his endorsement deal was signed and took effect from April 2022.
Later in the interview, Shelbourne inquired why, as per Pablo Torre’s allegations, Aspiration would pay Kawhi Leonard $28 million for doing nothing.
“I don’t know anything about the court documents, and I haven’t seen them, and I don’t know…. But the speculation is what it is. And why did they do that?… I don’t know why they did what they did, and frankly, any speculation would be crazy. These are guys who committed fraud,” said Ballmer in response.
“Look, they conned me. They committed fraud. They conned me. I invested in these guys, thinking it was on the up and up. At this stage, I am in no position to predict why they might have done anything they did.”
Mark Cuban defended Ballmer as well earlier, stating that it is unfeasible for any owner to do what he is accused of doing.
It is a bit odd but noteworthy that instead of speaking to the reporter who is accusing them of fraud, Ballmer has chosen to go on an alternative network to address this matter. If Ballmer really wants to settle this in the public’s eyes, a confrontation with Pablo Torre seems necessary.
