The case against the Los Angeles Clippers becomes more convincing by the week. Journalist Pablo Torre continues to dig deeper into allegations of salary cap circumvention against the Clippers to pay star forward Kawhi Leonard off the books, and his biggest critic just led him to even more damning evidence.
The latest episode of “Pablo Torre Finds Out” continues to poke holes in the Clippers’ claim that they had no improper relationship with Aspiration, the carbon offset company that also agreed to a reported $48 million marketing contract with Leonard that required no work and was never announced. Former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has vigorously defended Steve Ballmer and the Clippers every day on the social media app formerly known as Twitter, and it turns out that Cuban’s criticism of Torre’s reporting actually led him to uncover more documents that looks very bad for Ballmer and his associates.
In the first follow up to the report, Torre showed evidence that Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong (Ballmer’s former college roommate) gave a one-time investment of $1.9 million just before Leonard was owed a payment. Cuban has made the media rounds in the wake of that report, and on the “Road Trippin’” podcast with Kendrick Perkins, Richard Jefferson, and Channing Frye, he challenged Torre to uncover other investments that would cover the rest of Leonard’s agreement beyond the first payment.
Torre did just that. Here’s a short clip from the episode, but the entire thing is a must watch:
Cuban tweeted that the Clippers could have just bought more carbon credits to generate the money to pay Leonard off the books. Aspiration was charging $1 to plant a tree to offset carbon emissions, and the actual cost of that is reportedly 5 to 10 cents, so the margins were hugely in favor of the company. Well, Torre reported that the Clippers pre-purchased $21 million in carbon credits, allegedly in an attempt to keep the company afloat, perhaps so it could keep making payments to Leonard at a time when it had no money.
Ballmer even invested an additional $10 million in March 2023 when it was already apparent the company was failing. Ballmer paid $23 per share for this investment according to Torre’s reporting when he had previously paid $11 per share in his earlier rounds. Former Aspiration employees thought it was an “insane” investment by Ballmer at the time. By paying a higher share fee, Ballmer didn’t own more than five percent of the company, which would have set off major red flags.
The Clippers’ arena, the Intuit Dome, didn’t open until Aug. 2024. These carbon credits were purchased in June 2022. In sum, the Clippers allegedly sent Aspiration $118 million in 18 months.
Here’s a full timeline of the Clippers’ investments in Aspiration, via Torre’s podcast:
The Clippers immediately issued another statement on Thursday saying that Ballmer was duped. Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg plead guilty to a $248 million scheme to defraud investors earlier this year.
Torre’s latest episode shows that Leonard’s infamous representative, his uncle Dennis Robertson, sent a text to Sandberg asking where Leonard’s stock options were.
Sandberg resolved this issue by sending Leonard his own stock options.
When Sandberg was under deposition in another lawsuit related to fraud, he was asked about Steve Ballmer’s relationship with the company. Sandberg was asked if he was involved in securing Ballmer’s investment in Aspiration. He “plead the fifth,” refusing to give an answer. Sandberg had previously acknowledged the deals with other celebrities like Drake and Leonardo DiCaprio. It sure seems like Ballmer kept floating the company financially until the DOJ started looking into their fraud.
The NBA has hired the country’s top law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate the Clippers. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on the record that he had never heard of Aspiration before this investigation, even though the company had publicly agreed to a $300 million non-naming rights sponsorship deal with the franchise. Silver has since walked back his comments.
The 2026 NBA All-Star Game is slated to be hosted at the Clippers’ Intuit Dome this year. The league has said the investigation likely won’t be finished until that investigation is over.
It sure seems like Adam Silver doesn’t want to drop the hammer on the Clippers unless he finds a piece of paper that says “give money to Aspiration so they can route it to Leonard so we can circumvent the salary cap” signed by Ballmer. That very likely doesn’t exist, but when you factor in Uncle Dennis’ history of asking teams in free agency for guaranteed marketing money among other outrageous asks, there’s simply too many coincidences to ignore at this point.
The Clippers are already guilty in the court of public opinion
Here are some tweets in the wake of Torre’s latest reporting:
There’s major public pressure on the NBA to get this right. We may have to wait a while until a potential punishment drops, but Torre is already doing the work for the league.