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Baxter Holmes
Multiple Authors
Six months have handed since allegations first arose that the LA Clippers circumvented the NBA’s wage cap to pay star Kawhi Leonard, prompting the league to examine.
At last week’s board of governors assembly, NBA commissioner Adam Silver did not deal with, and was not requested about, the investigation. But last month at All-Star weekend — hosted by the Clippers — Silver said the investigation has been “enormously complicated.”
Here’s what we know — and do not know — about the allegations and where the investigation stands:
What are the particulars of the investigation, and what’s the newest?
The investigation, led by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, started in September 2025 and facilities on allegations that Clippers proprietor Steve Ballmer and the staff orchestrated a $28 million endorsement deal between Leonard and Aspiration, a now-bankrupt inexperienced banking company in which Ballmer had invested, to circumvent the league’s wage cap.
The NBA investigation adopted a collection of reports by Pablo Torre, a podcaster and ESPN contributor, who cited inner paperwork that confirmed Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration through his personal LLC in September 2021. That month, the Clippers also signed a $300 million deal with Aspiration, making the company the “first founding partner” of the Intuit Dome.
Six months later, Aspiration signed its deal with Leonard. An unnamed worker who purportedly labored for the banking company advised Torre that Leonard’s sponsorship deal “was to circumvent the salary cap.”
While Ballmer said he launched Leonard to Aspiration, he advised ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne in September 2025 he had no data of the deal and denied he directed the company to strike one.
Multiple sources with data of the investigation said that interviews are ongoing.
Those sources say that the staff from Wachtell Lipton, led by attorney David Anders — who has led other league investigations — is interviewing Clippers officers and other key figures, including former Aspiration workers with data of the company’s sponsorship deal with Leonard.
It’s unclear if Leonard has yet been interviewed — or if anyone close to him has, either.
“Wachtell’s investigation is ongoing,” said an NBA spokesperson. “There is more work to be done and no set timeline.”
It’s not uncommon for investigations to take many months. In 2021, the league requested Wachtell Lipton to conduct an investigation into the Phoenix Suns and then-owner Robert Sarver following a November 2021 ESPN story detailing allegations of racism and misogyny during Sarver’s 17 years as proprietor.
Anders also led that investigation, and Wachtell Lipton interviewed 320 people and reviewed more than 80,000 pages of emails, textual content messages and other paperwork.
The findings from that investigation weren’t announced until September 2022 — 10 months after the investigation was first launched.
Silver addressed the complexity of the Clippers investigation at All-Star Weekend: “You have a company in bankruptcy. You have thousands of documents, multiple witnesses that have been needed to be interviewed.”
He also said, “From everything I’ve been told, the Clippers have been fully cooperative.”
What occurs after Wachtell Lipton brings its findings back to the league workplace?
As it relates to potential wage cap circumvention, and relying on the findings, Silver is not solely accountable for deciding whether the Clippers will be punished, per the phrases of the NBA’s collective bargaining settlement.
Rather, Wachtell Lipton will current its findings to the league workplace, and Silver will determine whether to convey the firm’s findings to a impartial arbitrator appointed by the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association.
The arbitrator would then study what Silver introduced forth and determine the next step. The arbitrator could either grant Silver the authority to punish the Clippers or determine that there is not enough evidence to benefit any self-discipline and deny him the capability to levy penalties against the staff.
“The burden is on the league if we’re going to discipline a team, an owner, a player or any constituent members of the league,” Silver advised reporters following the league’s board of governors conferences in Midtown Manhattan in mid-September 2025. “I think as with any process that requires a fundamental sense of fairness, the burden should be on the party that is, in essence, bringing those charges.”
How have those concerned in the investigation responded to the allegations?
The allegations and subsequent investigation have forged a cloud over the Clippers franchise, but the staff’s management hasn’t wavered from its initial public denials.
In September 2025, following Torre’s report, Ballmer appeared on ESPN to deny he had data of the endorsement contract the sides finally signed, or that he directed the company to do so. Ballmer also said in his interview that he would welcome an investigation.
Later that same month, Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank made comparable remarks at the Clippers’ media day.
“We are glad there’s an investigation, and we welcome it,” Frank said. “We appreciate that there’ll be a clear-eyed look at these allegations, and we’re eager for the truth to come out. The assumptions and conclusions that have been made are disappointing and upsetting, and we expect the investigation will show that these allegations are wrong.”
Leonard also addressed the matter during media day in September 2025.
He dismissed the allegations, including, “The NBA is going to do their job. None of us did [any] wrongdoing. That’s it. We invite the investigations. It’s not going to be a distraction for me or the rest of the team.”
“The Clippers continue to cooperate with the league’s investigation and look forward to a resolution of this matter,” the Clippers advised ESPN in a assertion this week.
In a September 2025 assertion posted to X, Aspiration co-founder and former CEO Andrei Cherny also denied the allegations of wage cap circumvention, saying Leonard’s contract had “three pages of extensive obligations,” and that he signed the contract following “numerous internal conversations about the various things Aspiration was planning to do with Leonard.”
But in response to Cherny’s assertion, three former Aspiration executives who reported to him launched a assertion of their own, which was obtained by Torre.
That assertion was from Rojeh Avanesian, Aspiration’s former chief financial officer; Mike Shuckerow, Aspiration’s former chief working officer; and Eric Anderson, Aspiration’s former chief technology officer.
The executives said they did not agree with the company’s choice to signal the Leonard deal.
“The team expressed concerns at the time regarding the high cost of the arrangement and its lack of alignment with Aspiration’s brand and business strategy,” they said in the assertion. “While subsequent marketing efforts were undertaken, they were ultimately discontinued and should not be interpreted as support for the deal itself.”
They continued, “In our judgement, the Leonard Deal was not in the company’s best interest. It was strategically difficult to justify then, and it remains so today.”
Cherny declined to remark for this story.
Also as a consequence of Torre’s reporting, Ballmer has been named in a lawsuit filed by 11 former Aspiration buyers who say they were defrauded out of hundreds of thousands by co-founder Joseph Sanberg and others at the company. Ballmer was added to the lawsuit, initially filed in July 2025, in November 2025, with buyers alleging he participated in the fraud by funneling money to Leonard.
A listening to for the go well with is scheduled for April 22 at Los Angeles County Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles. Ballmer’s attorneys have requested the court to decide that the buyers failed to allege information ample enough to state a legal claim, and for the case to be dismissed.
What do we know about how Leonard’s contract with Aspiration came about?
Ballmer advised ESPN last 12 months that “[Aspiration] did request to be introduced to Kawhi, and under the rules, we can introduce our sponsors to our athletes. We just can’t be involved. We made an introduction. That was in early November [2021].”
Aspiration, which was based in 2013 and drew backers including Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, and Leonardo DiCaprio, had announced in August 2021 that it meant to go public via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a deal that would’ve valued the company at $2.3 billion and infused more than $400 million in money.
But by 2022, Shuckerow, Aspiration’s former chief working officer who says he is not a whistleblower to any authorities company about Aspiration, advised ESPN that spending had become a drawback at the company.
He said Aspiration had made costly investments in carbon initiatives in Brazil and elsewhere, employed in nonrevenue areas and accrued bills tied to sponsorship offers, including model offers with the Clippers, Athletes Unlimited and the Boston Red Sox.
Shuckerow said that preserving some of the company’s main investor relationships took on better significance — including with Ballmer, one of the 15 wealthiest people in the world — which he said Sanberg conveyed to the members of the govt staff.
Shuckerow said the entities that Ballmer oversaw — including the Clippers and the Intuit Dome — had become essential to Sanberg and Cherny not only for Ballmer’s continued investment but for the credibility that Aspiration needed in its pursuit of going public.
“It was made clear to the corporate side of the house that the Ballmer ecosystem was a priority,” Shuckerow said.
Another high-level former Aspiration govt advised ESPN that Sanberg also advised colleagues the Clippers were trying to raise Leonard’s public profile, which could lead to more endorsements for him. That govt also said Sanberg said the deal could lead to more business between Aspiration and the Clippers. The govt said there was never any point out of the wage cap or makes an attempt to circumvent it, and that they never heard Sanberg’s sentiment from Clippers officers.
A source close to the Clippers with data of the investigation said, “As is clear from (Sanberg’s) guilty plea, this desperate admitted felon would say anything while struggling to keep his company afloat.”
Sanberg’s attorney did not return a request in search of remark.
Shuckerow also said that some company executives expressed opposition at the initial dimension of Leonard’s deal — $28 million, plus $20 million in equity in money. (In one textual content message exchange between Aspiration executives, reviewed by ESPN, one govt described calling a “Hail Mary” to contact Sanberg about the deal while noting that it “likely won’t do anything.”)
Shuckerow said that, in response to the opposition, Sanberg advised other executives that he’d give Leonard $20 million of his personal equity in the company. The deal was signed in April 2022. In their joint assertion, the three former executives said the deal “was presented to the company as a completed arrangement and executed by Mr. Cherny despite significant objections from members of this senior management team.”
It did not mirror any strategy beforehand communicated to us, nor was it reviewed through Aspiration’s Investment Committee course of.”
In one email exchange from June 2022 that was obtained by ESPN, an Aspiration marketing official said there were “some fairly huge flags” in the settlement. (The Wall Street Journal first reported about the emails in October.)
“Specifically, we should be getting method more than one 8-hr. manufacturing day for the price that we are paying,” the official wrote. “Second, Kawhi’s lack of social media accounts will considerably hamper our capability to ship significant media worth on this marketing campaign. As presently written, Aspiration will need to make a huge investment in paid media for this content material to get any visibility.”
In hindsight, the high-level Aspiration executive who spoke to ESPN said that the process “could’ve been dealt with higher.”
What does Leonard’s contract with Aspiration actually say?
ESPN obtained a 19-page contract between Leonard and Aspiration, signed in April 2022, which details several pages of obligations for Leonard. Among them were commitments including autograph signings, community service events, promotional and public appearances and an annual eight-hour day of filming.
Aspiration had the right to terminate the contract if Leonard no longer played for the Clippers. The contract also includes a so-called “beliefs” clause, which stipulates that Leonard “may decline to proceed with any motion desired by the Company under Section 3.2 if Leonard believes that such proposed actions are not constant with his beliefs.”
The beliefs clause became a focus of both Torre’s reporting and other commentary about the Clippers-Aspiration allegations.
It’s unclear if Leonard or the Clippers had any other contracts or agreements with Aspiration.
What do league insiders think of Leonard’s contract?
ESPN showed five player agents who don’t represent Leonard language in Leonard’s endorsement contract pertaining to obligations and termination clauses. ESPN also showed the same language to an NBPA source who is familiar with such contracts.
Said one agent, “This is commonplace. Nothing uncommon here.”
Said another, “There’s nothing in there that jumps out to me. Everything is fairly commonplace.”
A third agent made similar comments.
Two additional agents singled out the “beliefs” clause, with one saying, “I’ve never seen a participant have the proper to decline to do something due to ‘beliefs.’ A very good lawyer would have at least said bonafide ‘non secular’ beliefs.”
Another, the fifth agent, made a similar remark, adding that it could represent an “wonderful negotiation and/or an inexperienced lawyer on behalf of Aspiration.”
The NBPA source advised ESPN that “there is nothing in that contract that is inconsistent with the regular course of business. The only thing that stands out is that language that says ‘consistent with his beliefs, which is too broad and too vague. And that is really just a question of good negotiation. If a lawyer said, ‘Look, we want to have this language as broad as possible because we can’t sit here today and envision all the promotional activities you may be asking Kawhi to do,’ and if the lawyer for Aspiration is stupid enough to say, OK, we’ll allow that,’ then that’s just good negotiation by Kawhi’s team. But there’s nothing on the face of that contract that suggests that this was all orchestrated.”
The NBPA source then said that while the language in the “beliefs” provision is actually favorable to Leonard, the source also pointed out that Aspiration wasn’t a well-managed company and that it finally went bankrupt.
The 5 brokers individually echoed the NBPA source’s level that while facets of the contract may be favorable to Leonard, there seems to be nothing in the deal itself that suggests that Leonard’s deal was orchestrated in such a method as to circumvent the NBA’s wage cap.
In his September 2025 post on X, Cherny defended the “beliefs” clause. “The ‘beliefs’ provision is not unusual in celebrity endorsements and merely means we can’t do something like make a vegetarian eat meat as a way of forcing them to break the contract,” he wrote in his September post. “It doesn’t mean you can have a ‘belief’ of not talking to a camera.”
Did Leonard fulfill any of those obligations?
In the summer season of 2022, Variety reported that Aspiration partnered with Creative Artists Agency to “provide sustainability services, carbon reduction services and customer-centric climate impact solutions to corporate, sports and entertainment industry brands.”
The company helped develop a checklist of potential concepts for Leonard to be concerned with Aspiration, which they despatched to the company that summer season, after Leonard had signed the deal, according to an e mail obtained by ESPN.
“To launch Aspiration’s new partnership with Kawhi Leonard, the team has developed initial concepts for how the two can partner for maximum impact of his service days and to amplify the partnership in a unique way that drives the topics Aspiration cares about,” the e mail said.
One concerned partnering with the musician Drake, another Aspiration associate; another targeted on tracing Leonard’s carbon footprint; another imagined Leonard working with native colleges for efforts involving environmental sustainability.
The high-level Aspiration govt advised ESPN that company advertising and marketing officers mentioned varied obligations with Leonard’s camp in the fall of 2022, including neighborhood actions and media/filming.
Shuckerow said he alerted the advertising and marketing employees in 2022 that the company had unused belongings in the Leonard deal and urged they at least goal the “low-hanging fruit” such as autographed memorabilia. Shuckerow said he wasn’t sure if advertising and marketing employees or any Aspiration officers contacted the Clippers or Leonard about such efforts.
A source with data of Leonard’s schedule said that Leonard’s camp was in talks with Aspiration about executing some obligations, including neighborhood appearances, including that nothing was set in stone because the two sides were working around both Leonard’s schedule — particularly as he continued to rehab his surgically repaired proper knee — and the Clippers’ schedule.
At the same time, change was also occurring within the company. In October 2022, Aspiration parted methods with Cherny, and Olivia Albrecht turned its new CEO.
Leonard returned from damage in December 2022. That same month, Aspiration laid off roughly 100 workers.
Also in December 2022, according to Torre’s reporting, Clippers restricted associate Dennis J. Wong invested $1.99 million in Aspiration, 9 days before the company made an overdue $1.75 million cost to Leonard.
Ultimately, Leonard did not seem in any of the mentioned advertising and marketing activations for the company.
“I have no reason to believe that Kawhi wouldn’t have done something if we asked,” Shuckerow said. “I don’t know if we ever got to the stage where something got far enough in the strategy stage where we actually asked him for a concrete ask.”
In March 2023, Ballmer invested an further $10 million in Aspiration in a funding spherical that included earlier company buyers, The Athletic reported last 12 months, in what one source with data of Ballmer’s intentions called a show of good religion in both Albrecht and the company’s new direction.
Were there any public hyperlinks between Leonard and Aspiration?
The high-level Aspiration govt who spoke to ESPN said the company mentioned an Aspiration-themed Leonard bobblehead that the Clippers would release during the 2022-23 season.
A source with data of the deal said the merchandise was half of the Clippers’ deal with Aspiration, and not Leonard’s.
While the bobblehead was in manufacturing in late 2022, Aspiration officers contacted the Clippers and requested that the company’s title be taken off the bobblehead because it was a plastic merchandise, which ran counter to Aspiration’s climate-focused mission, the source said.
The Aspiration title was subsequently eliminated from the bobbleheads’ packaging and all promotional materials, but because the bobbleheads had already been produced, the Aspiration title could not be eliminated from the bobbleheads themselves, the source said.
The bobblehead was launched, as deliberate, to the first 10,000 followers at the Clippers-Thunder sport in late March 2023, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
“Bobblehead production follows a consistent timeline each season, which begins in late summer. The bobbleheads are commonly tied to sponsorship agreements, and in the 2022-23 season, included partners such as Cedars-Sinai, Kia and AT&T,” the Clippers advised ESPN. “The Kawhi bobblehead was handled in the same way, part of a sponsorship activation that included Aspiration, similar to others players’ bobbleheads that year.”
What occurred with Aspiration?
A source with data of the matter advised ESPN that the Clippers terminated their settlement with Aspiration in May 2023 because the company breached its contract with the staff by defaulting on funds.
The Clippers continued posting a collection of pleased birthday messages to their gamers and employees on social media that referenced the company in 2023. The posts were half of a social media schedule for that season, according to the source with data of the matter. The last such post on X came on June 29, 2023, when the Clippers posted a pleased birthday for Leonard and referenced Aspiration in the caption.
Later that summer season, in August 2023, the company that was going to take Aspiration public announced that it terminated the deal. In January 2024, Bloomberg News reported that Aspiration was the subject of a Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation into whether the company misled prospects.
Aspiration filed for chapter in March 2025, with a reported debt of $170 million. In chapter filings, the company said it owed the Clippers $30 million, the most of its collectors, and that it owed $7 million to a restricted legal responsibility company owned by Leonard.
At media day, Leonard was requested if he was still owed that determine. “I got to look back at the books,” he said, “but nah, it was more than that.”
In August 2025, Sanberg formally pled guilty to two counts of wire fraud. Federal prosecutors said he defrauded buyers and lenders of more than $248 million.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 27 in federal court in Los Angeles.
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