In today’s NBA Board of Governors meeting, league Commissioner Adam Silver spoke out for the first time on the allegations surrounding Kawhi Leonard, the Clippers, and the now-bankrupt company Aspiration. In his first public comments on the matter, Silver admitted he was blinded and had no suspicion of foul play.
“When the podcast came out, it was news to me,” said Silver on the ongoing scandal. “Frankly, I never heard of the company Aspiration before, and I’d never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawhi or anything around an engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers.”
The league has previously investigated both the Clippers and Kawhi for potential CBA violations, but they never found definitive proof to take action. In this case, while all evidence is circumstantial, it didn’t take long for Silver and the NBA’s legal team to justify launching an independent and thorough investigation.
“I saw some of the information, and we spoke to our general counsel, who oversees any investigations. He had a conversation with Steve Ballmer, and we quickly concluded that this rose to the level that necessitates an investigation, and one that’s done outside of our office.”
If found guilty of circumventing the cap, penalties could be severe for the Clippers, including but not limited to: the loss of draft picks, a fine of $3.5 million or more, suspensions for Ballmer and executives, and the voiding of Kawhi Leonard’s contract. Of course, Silver intends to get both sides of the story before resorting to such drastic methods.
“I’ve been around the league long enough, seen different [forms] of allegations, that I’m a big believer in due process and fairness, and we need to let the investigation run its course.”
We don’t know how long this investigation will take, but with rival executives seething, many are calling on the league to “bring the hammer down” and make an example of the Clippers. All the while, the team maintains its innocence by claiming it had no knowledge or control of Leonard’s “no-show” endorsement deal.
At the heart of this scandal is the tree-planting company, “Aspiration.” Ballmer was a major investor in the company, but he says it was all a scam that cost him millions. While the Clippers’ owner takes credit for introducing Kawhi to the business, he says that any deal they reached privately was outside of his scope.
Of course, this doesn’t account for the sheer value of the contract, the suspicious stipulations involved, and Leonard’s history of illegal requests in the past. When you consider all the details, it’s very easy to conclude that the Clippers were using Aspiration as a front, but it really makes you wonder how the NBA had no idea anything was happening.
If not for Aspiration going bankrupt, their business files may have never been released, and we might never have found Kawhi’s strange arrangement with them. Ultimately, how this ends is entirely up to the NBA. Depending on what they find in their investigation, it could be one of the biggest cheating-related scandals in modern league history, or nothing more than a false alarm triggered by a fraudulent company.
The NBA has weathered scandals before, but few with stakes this high for both a franchise and one of the league’s biggest stars. Whether Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers are cleared or punished, the outcome will reshape not just their future but how the league enforces its most sacred rule: keeping the playing field level under the salary cap.
