Former Aspiration CEO denied that Kawhi Leonard’s endorsement deal with the company was a “no-show” contract.
Andrei Cherny, who resigned from his role with the company in 2022, wrote on X on Friday that the “claim that the contract with Kawhi Leonard as a ‘no show’ contract is false.”
“The contract contained three pages of extensive obligations that Leonard had to perform,” Cherny continued. “And the contract clearly said that if Leonard did not meet those obligations, Aspiration could terminate the contract.
“The ‘beliefs’ provision is not unusual in celebrity endorsements and merely means we can’t do something like make a vegetarian eat meat as a way of forcing them to break the contract. It doesn’t mean you can have a ‘belief’ of not talking to a camera.’’
Cherny added that he doesn’t “remember conversations about the NBA salary cap” before signing the endorsement deal with Leonard and that there “were numerous internal conversations about the various things Aspiration was planning to do with Leonard once the 2022-23 season began” before he stepped away.
“I can’t speak to what was done or not done after I left — or why,” he wrote.
Cherny is speaking out less than two weeks after Pablo Torre first reported about the alleged four-year, $28 million no-show endorsement deal that Leonard received from Aspiration, a company Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested in.
Torre, for his part, quickly responded to Cherny on X.
“Hi Andrei — Your tweet is, obviously, false. @pablofindsout requested an on-camera interview with you via LinkedIn. We then e-mailed you a series of detailed questions. (You told me they got lost in your spam filter.) Also: this is you, right?” Torre wrote, adding a screenshot of an article that said Cherny was being eyed by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigators in the Aspiration fraud case during his failed 2024 U.S. congressional primary campaign in Arizona.
“Pablo is right on this,” Cherny responded. “By ‘past 10 days,’ I meant since his podcast. I originally wrote it that way but it was too many characters. As for his screenshot it was bad reporting at the time (as I said then) and the DOJ charges make clear what happened and who the fraudster was.”
Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg was arrested earlier this year and later pleaded guilty to defrauding investors.
Last week, Ballmer denied knowingly circumventing the salary cap during an interview with ESPN.
“Any contrary assertion is provably false: The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago, during the 2022-23 season, when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations,” the Clippers said in a statement. “Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Ballmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation. The team and Mr. Ballmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can.”
The NBA has since opened an investigation into the allegations, hiring the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, which is the same law firm the league hired to investigate former Clippers owner Donald Sterling and ex-Suns owner Robert Sarver.