It’s going to be hard for the Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer to explain their way out of the latest evidence against them in the Kawhi Leonard Aspiration scandal.
Pablo Torre revealed a letter from the Clippers with their team logo on it confirming a nearly $21 million withdrawal from an escrow account to be used to fund carbon projects for Aspiration, the defunct sustainable banking and investment company that is accused of signing Leonard to a $28 million “no-show” endorsement deal as a way for the Clippers to allegedly circumvent the salary cap. Ballmer was an investor in Aspiration.
The letter, dated June 14, 2022, was signed by the Clippers’ chief financial officer.
“This, I’m told, was enough to not only pay Kawhi Leonard obviously, it was enough to hit its fundraising target,” Torre reported on the latest episode of his “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast. “It was enough to keep the company afloat two weeks before Kawhi’s initial no-show payment was due on June 30, 2022.”
Ballmer and the Clippers’ executive team heard Aspiration’s sales pitch “a couple weeks” before the letter, according to Torre.
“The money came in quickly,” a source told Torre.
Torre then played a clip from an interview he conducted with anonymous “Source No. 2,” who is described as a former senior executive in Aspiration’s finance department.
The source was asked about a tweet from former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban — who has been defending Ballmer — in which Cuban argued that it “would have been a lot easier and a lot safer, if he was trying to circumvent the CBA to just buy more carbon credits,” which would’ve created immediate cash to pay Leonard.
“They did that. Literally, [Cuban] described one of the few ways that the Clippers and Ballmer got money into Aspiration,” Source No. 2 told Torre. “He literally described exactly what they did. He’s right. He’s completely correct. That would be one of the avenues that you would use to circumvent the cap.”
Ballmer previously told ESPN he introduced Leonard to Aspiration but wasn’t involved in the endorsement deal between the two sides.
The NBA is investigating the allegations that the endorsement deal was done to circumvent the cap.
NBA insider Jake Fischer reported that the investigation likely won’t conclude until after the 2026 NBA All-Star Game — which will be hosted by the Clippers.
Aspiration filed for bankruptcy in March after being charged with fraud by the Justice Department.