Steve Ballmer Suspended, Clippers Fined $30 Million
The NBA punished the Los Angeles Clippers for salary cap circumvention over Kawhi Leonard's contract: Ballmer suspended a year, the club fined $30 million, stripped of five draft picks.
Nine months of silence ended on Wednesday, September 2, when the NBA handed down one of the harshest penalties in its history. Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has been suspended for one year from all league and team activities, and the organization was fined $30 million for circumventing the salary cap in connection with Kawhi Leonard’s contract.
The punishment does not stop with Ballmer. The Clippers will lose five first round draft picks, one every year from 2029 through 2033, which for a team amounts to losing half a decade of reinforcements. Leonard himself, a two time Finals MVP, was fined $700,000. Lawrence Frank, the club’s president of basketball operations, was suspended for six months, while Gillian Zucker, president of business operations, received a one year suspension, the same as the owner.
Where the investigation began
The case centers on a $28 million sponsorship deal Leonard signed in 2022 with Aspiration Fund Adviser. At the same time, the same company had a separate $300 million agreement with the Clippers. Aspiration has since collapsed, and its co-founder Joseph Sanberg was sentenced to 14 years in prison for defrauding investors, which is what opened the door to the investigation. The league formally launched its probe in September 2025, after journalist Pablo Torre first reported on the Leonard-Aspiration connection, and handed the review to the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Leonard’s uncle and former business manager, Dennis Robertson, did not escape consequences either: he received a five year ban from doing any business with NBA clubs, as the league accuses him of pressuring the Clippers to line up additional off court work for Leonard.
Commissioner Adam Silver did not mince words when announcing the decision:
“I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violation of our rules.”
The club responded in kind, in its own statement:
“We strongly reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a highly biased investigation.”
Not the first time
This is not the Clippers’ first run in with the league’s disciplinary process since Ballmer took over. The former Microsoft CEO bought the club in 2014 for $2 billion, and just a year later paid a $250,000 fine over an improper offer to free agent DeAndre Jordan, who was offered, alongside recruitment, a $200,000 a year endorsement deal with Lexus. According to the league, that earlier history of violations factored into the size of the current penalty.
In a written statement, Kawhi Leonard acknowledged shortcomings but not intentional fraud: he said he signed the contract in good faith, without knowledge of any intent to circumvent the salary cap, and added that he takes full responsibility for the mistakes made by people in his inner circle.
The club and its staff are now subject to a five year league compliance and monitoring program, and Frank and Zucker will forfeit pay during their suspensions. The Clippers have said they will challenge the ruling through arbitration.
For fans, the most immediate consequence concerns Leonard’s trade. The deal with the Toronto Raptors, agreed back in June, had been waiting on exactly this outcome. Since Leonard was not suspended and his contract was not voided, nothing stands in the way of his move to the team he led to a championship and a Finals MVP award in 2019. The season opens in mid October, and until then Toronto will have to figure out how to fit Leonard into its rotation without the five future first round picks that stayed behind in Los Angeles.
