In what is undeniably the most comically absurd bombshell of the offseason, Kawhi Leonard apparently received $28 million for a no-show endorsement deal with the now-defunct, definitely fraudulent company 'Aspiration,' a tree-planting venture. According to The Athletic's Pablo Torre, it may have been a way for the Los Angeles Clippers to circumvent the salary cap and sweeten the pot when Leonard left the championship-winning Toronto Raptors in 2019.
Exclusive: Kawhi Leonard signed a $28M endorsement deal for a "no-show job" with a fraudulent tree-planting company funded by $50M from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, according to documents obtained by @PabloTorre.
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 3, 2025
"It was to circumvent the salary cap," an inside source says. pic.twitter.com/F6z5pNEkI1
Here's the quick summary: Leonard received $7 million annually for a four-year period from a fraudulent tree-planting company that promises to 'clear your conscience and your emissions.' The company, worth billions of dollars, had several celebrity endorsements, but Leonard never once mentioned it publicly or did anything to promote the business.
One source told Torre it was an effort from the Clippers to skate around the salary cap. The Clippers, on the other hand, flatly deny that, calling the claims "provably false."
We allegedly live in a society of due process, where you're innocent until proven guilty, so we can't drop the hammer on Leonard (yet). But Torre is one of the best investigative journalists working in sports today and he's not one to blow smoke haphazardly. If this is proven to be true, you can bet your bottom dollar the Clippers will face consequences — both from the league office and in the court of public opinion. You know Raptors fans are PO'd right now.
That said, those league-mandated punishments might not be as catastrophic to L.A. as one might expect for such a blatant tilting of the scales.
NBA rules won't exactly drop the hammer on Clippers for tampering with Kawhi Leonard
One of the most notable points of comparison for this Kawhi Leonard case is when Glen Taylor and the Minnesota Timberwolves "circumvented the salary cap" with Joe Smith, signing him to three small, one-year contracts while promising to follow it up with a more substantial long-term deal. That isn't half as bad as what Leonard perpetrated, but Minnesota felt the full force of the league's ire in response.
In the late 90s, the Timberwolves were fined $3.5 million and stripped of five first-round draft picks. Smith's contract was also voided. If what the Clippers did was worse — and it definitely was — L.A. could be in some real trouble, right? Losing five first-round picks, especially when their 2028 and 2029 picks already belong to the Philadelphia 76ers as a result of the James Harden trade, sure would be catastrophic.
Nope. The current NBA rulebook is not set up to encourage tampering, but it's also not really set up to meaningfully discourage a grossly wealthy tech billionaire with a single-minded focus on winning like Steve Ballmer.
According to the current CBA, teams who circumvent the cap are fined $4.5 million upon the first infraction. They also lose one — only one — first-round pick, as CBS Sports' Sam Quinn laid out on X.
NBA penalties for cap circumvention:
— Sam Quinn (@SamQuinnCBS) September 3, 2025
- Fine of up to $4.5 million for a first offense.
- Fine of up to $5.5 million for a second offense.
- Loss of one first-round pick.
- The possibility of voiding contracts that involved circumvention. pic.twitter.com/O6NO9bMWVv
The potential stinger here is if the NBA actually voids Leonard's contract, but he's no longer on the deal he signed when this alleged tampering occured. So really, it feels like the Clippers will get away almost scot free. It's difficult to imagine Adam Silver's NBA going all the way with this to begin with, and it's far enough in the past for L.A. to mostly shrug its shoulders and say 'oops, sorry.'
The Clippers historically don't draft very well and Ballmer won't care about money, plus he has no plans to let L.A. toil at the bottom of the standings for an extended period of time. Even once Leonard and Harden fade into obsolescence, it's Los Angeles. The Clippers won't have much trouble luring another star to the City of Angels.
Clippers, Kawhi Leonard scandal will live in infamy
If the league lets L.A. and Leonard walk off into the sunsety, as they will, it will go down as one of the most damaging scandals in recent history in terms of public perception. Leonard and the Clippers will be fine financially, but fans won't let them forget this. It's a stain on Ballmer's reputation and a real point of contention with Leonard, who made the extremely rare decision to leave the reigning champs in free agency. It's hard not to start imaging an alternate timeline where Leonard re-signs in Toronto. It changes the course of two franchises and the league as a whole.
At the time, Leonard explained the decision as a desire to return home, which is fair enough. But there was some (apparently accurate) conspiratorial questioning of how the Clippers pulled it off. Not only did L.A. trade for Paul George (and burn their future to the ground, dealing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to OKC in the process), but apparently the Clippers also paid Leonard $7 million annually more than his allotted max contract. That certainly helped even the playing field with Toronto, who held Leonard's bird rights and the ability to offer a more substantial contract.
Ballmer almost certainly does not care about "public perception" so long as the Clippers are winning games and selling out the Intuit Dome, but he's not going to outrun this. We will be talking about this for decades, or until the collapse of modern society, whichever comes first.