NBA officials and team owners will meet today in New York for a regular preseason board of governors meeting as the league grapples with a high-profile controversy hanging over the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the 30 team owners — including Clippers owner Steve Ballmer — will gather as they reckon with a report that LA may have circumvented the salary cap utilizing Aspiration, a California-based environmental sustainability company. Silver will hold a press conference after the meeting, where reporters will ask the commissioner about the nascent league investigation into the relationship between Aspiration, the Clippers and Leonard.
In April of 2022, Aspiration signed Leonard to a $28 million sponsorship contract that resulted in no public promotion of Aspiration by Leonard, according to reporting by the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” and later confirmed by The Athletic. Leonard also received $20 million in shares in the company through a deal with Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sanberg, two sources with knowledge of the agreement told The Athletic. Leonard is not listed as a shareholder in company filings. Boston Sports Journal was the first to report the equity deal.
Ballmer invested $50 million with Aspiration in September of 2021, the same month the Clippers and Aspiration announced a 23-year, $300 million arena sponsorship deal. This March, Sanberg was arrested and Aspiration filed for bankruptcy. Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding investors of $248 million, on charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department.
The league announced it was launching an investigation last week and hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to look into the matter.
Silver was asked in 2019 what it would take for him to punish a team in the same way his predecessor, David Stern, penalized the Minnesota Timberwolves a quarter-century ago. The Timberwolves signed forward Joe Smith to a series of inexpensive one-year deals with a promise to ink him to a massive future contract. The NBA fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, stripped them of five first-round picks, voided Smith’s contract and temporarily suspended then-owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale.
“Certainly, if we had an incident along those same lines, we have the same tools available to us,” Silver said. “I think that … was just such a bright-line violation, and at the time the league office responded very forcefully. Again, I think the environment I’d say has changed in certain ways. Having been involved with the league for a long time, I know there’s been some people out there saying things have gotten much worse.
“I don’t necessarily think things are worse than they were in the old days. I think there’s a lot more transparency around the league. There’s a lot more attention. I can only say I think that that would be enormously risky behavior. It was back then, and if there were to be a similar fact pattern, we would respond in a very similar way.”
It may take a while to know what the NBA uncovers. Its investigation into former Suns owner Robert Sarver lasted 10 months, but the league took fewer than two months to hand down a $250,000 fine to the Clippers in 2015 for including an unauthorized third-party endorsement deal during its free agent pitch to DeAndre Jordan.
That may not be the only issue top of mind for Silver and the league. The NBA took a step forward this summer in evaluating whether it will ultimately expand beyond the 30 franchises currently in the league. The NBA has not added a new team since the Charlotte Bobcats began play in 2003. Seattle and Las Vegas are considered top contenders to get teams, but some owners have been wary about expansion and diluting the NBA’s new $76 billion media rights deal.
The NBA is also exploring moving into Europe by starting a basketball league on the continent. Silver announced last March that the NBA was moving forward on the project alongside FIBA and could start in the next two to three years.
Both decisions could ultimately have a significant long-term economic impact on the NBA, but neither issue looms as large right now as the investigation into Leonard and the Clippers.
(Photo of Adam Silver by David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)
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