Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested nearly $10 million in March 2023 into the company Aspiration, which allegedly gave Kawhi Leonard a no-show deal that the NBA is now investigating, The Athletic reported Friday.
This investment came 18 months following Ballmer’s $50 million investment in Aspiration, which is behind the league’s probe into the Clippers to see if Leonard was given a side deal to circumvent the salary cap.
Pablo Torre first reported on Sept. 3 about the alleged four-year, $28 million no-show endorsement deal that Leonard received.
Ballmer’s 2023 investment came as Aspiration was desperate for funding, and came just three months after a $1.99 million investment from Dennis Wong, who serves as vice chairman of the Clippers, The Athletic reported.
Shortly after Wong’s investment, the financial technology company made a $1.75 million payment to Leonard, according to Torre.
Ballmer’s initial $50 million investment in December 2021 came three months after the company signed a deal worth over $300 million with the Clippers that made them a founding sponsor of the team’s new arena.
Leonard, 34, then signed a four-year deal worth $28 million with Aspiration seven months later, with the company struggling to make its quarterly payments to the six-time All-Star.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver confirmed on Wednesday that the league will be investigating Ballmer but will not dish out punishment unless there is hard evidence.
“I would be reluctant to act if there was a mere appearance of impropriety. I think the goal of a full investigation is to find if there really was impropriety,” Silver said. “Because also in a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false.
“I would want anybody else who is in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in right now, or Kawhi Leonard, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people are making allegations against me.”
Ballmer, during an appearance on “SportsCenter” last week, said he was conned by Aspiration, whose co-founder, Joe Sanberg, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud for defrauding investors and lenders of more than $248 million, the Justice Department announced in August.
“These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. They conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up, and they conned me at this stage. I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi,” Ballmer said.
“I reviewed, my staff reviewed primarily fraudulent financials,” he added. “Now, should I have sniffed it out? Maybe I feel embarrassed and kind of silly that I didn’t sniff it out, but I didn’t. I made the investment. A lot of other smart investors didn’t sniff it out either.”