NBA Finds No Evidence of Illegal Deals Between the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard. I’m Sorry, What?

The NBA has announced today that they have found no evidence of Steve Ballmer secretly paying Kawhi Leonard via sponsorship deals in order to circumvent the salary cap. If this isn’t a story you’ve been keeping up with, here’s a quick run down.

In September 2025, former ESPN contributor, Pablo Torre released an episode of his show “Pablo Torre Finds Out” where he presented what I would describe as a “mountain of evidence” that pointed to a deal being secretly made between Clippers’ owner, Steve Ballmer, and Kawhi Leonard. This deal would use a Clippers sponsor, Aspiration, in order to create a no-show sponsorship deal that would make Kawhi Leonard the highest paid personality on Aspiration’s payroll. 

While there was no direct “smoking gun” of a deal between Ballmer and Kawhi. Looking through investments from Ballmer and payments made to Kawhi made it fairly evident that something foul was afoot. Since then, Torre has gone on to release more and more evidence across multiple follow-up episode on this scandal.

The court of public opinion seemed to be very much in agreement that something fishy had transpired between the Clippers’ owner and star forward that revolved around the now defunct Aspiration. Outside of Clippers fans and billionaire Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban for some reason, it was hard to find someone who thought that all of this evidence was circumstantial and Ballmer had handled Kawhi’s contract above board. 

Now we can add the NBA to the list of entities who see no proof of wrongdoing in this deal, as they protect their richest owner, and get to preserve the illusion that Adam Silver has control over the Billionaire owners of NBA franchises. Kawhi will go to Toronto, the Clippers will continue to be the little brother organization in LA, and Ballmer will see no consequences as per usual for billionaires breaking rules. What a time to be alive.