The NBA has punished the Los Angeles Clippers for a scheme it says tried to circumvent the salary cap to pay Kawhi Leonard. The team will lose five years of first-round picks plus millions in fines.
Transcript
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news now. The NBA punished the Los Angeles Clippers for going around salary cap limits. The Clippers face a $30 million fine. Now, if you’re the owner, Steve Ballmer, maybe you’re rich enough not to care about $30 million, but you may well care that you are suspended and your team lost their first-round draft pick for five years. NPR’s Becky Sullivan reports.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Last September, a podcast by the investigative journalist Pablo Torre shook the NBA’s world. The LA Clippers, he claimed, had made a shady deal with a company called Aspiration, meant to duck the NBA salary cap in order to pay millions of extra dollars to their all-star forward Kawhi Leonard.
PABLO TORRE: What I started doing was scour the internet for any mentions of Aspiration, any appearances, tweets, quotes, Instagram posts, anything by Kawhi Leonard endorsing Aspiration. And this was hard to find.
SULLIVAN: This was big news. That kind of sham endorsement deal is banned under the league’s salary cap rules. Torre’s reporting won him a Pulitzer Prize and led the NBA to hire a law firm to run their own investigation. That month, team officials and Leonard himself denied breaking any rules.
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KAWHI LEONARD: I mean, the NBA is going to do their job. None of us did no wrongdoing. And, yeah, I mean, that’s it. We invite the investigations.
SULLIVAN: The NBA and its players union have long agreed to measures like the salary cap as ways to encourage competitive balance. In other words, to prevent rich owners with deep pockets from freely outspending cash-poor teams. The man who owns the Clippers is the former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. In fact, he’s by far the richest owner in the NBA, worth some $150 billion. His wife, Connie, is a financial supporter of NPR. In an interview with ESPN last September, Steve Ballmer denied the allegations of misconduct.
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STEVE BALLMER: We, the Clippers, have abided by the salary caps circumvention rules because that’s the right thing to do.
SULLIVAN: Yesterday, the league released findings from that investigation it opened and announced a historic punishment. The NBA’s law firm found the Clippers had arranged off-court deals for Leonard with Aspiration and three other companies in violation of league rules. Three team officials, including Ballmer, will be suspended from all league and team activities for as long as a year. Leonard avoided suspension but must pay a $700,000 fine. He was traded this summer to the Toronto Raptors.
The biggest blow to the Clippers as a team is the loss of draft picks, five years worth of first-round picks, starting in 2029. In a statement, the Clippers said they, quote, “vehemently rejects the NBA’s findings” and accused the investigation of bias. The team said it will vigorously challenge the findings and penalties.
Becky Sullivan, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “COMFORTABLE ENOUGH”)
MAC AYRES: (Singing) As the color fades to black, I would take the whole thing back now, baby.
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