NBA fans were met with a massive news bombshell on Wednesday morning when The Athletic’s Pablo Torre alleged that Kawhi Leonard and the LA Clippers used outside endorsement deals to circumvent the league’s salary cap rules.
On Wednesday’s episode of “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” Torre shared that he believes Leonard signed a $28 million deal to endorse Aspiration, a now bankrupt tree-planting company partially funded by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, as a way to earn more than the maximum contract with LA.
“Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration,” the team wrote in a statement to Torre. “Any contrary assertion is provably false.”
Though it wasn’t by a lot, Leonard did take less money to stay in LA for his most recent extension.
"Kawhi was a great partner,” Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank told ESPN in January of 2024. “Because of this new CBA, there's harsh penalties but team-building penalties for high-spending teams, and Kawhi understood it."
If Torre’s theory is true, Leonard and the Clips tried to find their way around the CBA and its rules.
Celtics fans should be irate if this Clippers claim is true
To be clear, nothing has been proven at this point, but if this all turns out to be true, then Boston Celtics fans should be rooting for the steepest punishment possible from the league.
No fanbase has watched their team get absolutely railroaded by financial penalties quite like Boston’s. The Celtics essentially had to give away Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in trades this summer to shed salary so they could avoid the second apron and the consequences that accompany spending above it.
This wasn’t a “the season didn’t end the way we would’ve liked, so we can’t justify spending this sort of money” situation, either. These moves were inevitable, regardless of the circumstances.
“I think that the reality is that we knew going into this year, regardless of how it ended, that we were going to have some really hard decisions to make because of the penalties,” Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said earlier this summer. “The second apron is why those trades happened. I think that those were pretty obvious. And the basketball penalties associated with those are real.”
Boston was basically punished for building a championship roster the organic way. They drafted well and were able to pay Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum supermax contracts, which helped put them well above the salary cap. They turned other former draft picks (Marcus Smart, Robert Williams, Aaron Nesmith, who was traded for Malcolm Brogdon) into Porzingis and Holiday.
Their “superteam” didn’t come together like those that NBA fans complained about in the past. A group of basketball buddies didn’t all come together and decide to sign with Boston. Instead, the front office built with homegrown talent acquired through the draft.
It’s unfortunate that the Celtics’ championship window didn’t last as long as it could’ve, but there will be other teams who fall victim to the CBA. The rules are the rules, and every team has to abide by them in the same way.
The Clippers are no different.
Who knows what the league will do if they investigate the situation and find Torre’s claims to be true, but Cs fans will likely be rooting for Adam Silver to throw the book at Ballmer.