As the Clippers became the center of the basketball universe on Wednesday over allegations that they circumvented the salary cap, one former NBA majority owner is standing behind the team.
Hours after Pablo Torre reported on his podcast that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer allegedly worked around the cap with a $28 million no-show marketing agreement for Kawhi Leonard, former Mavericks head Mark Cuban not only backed Ballmer, but said he did nothing wrong.
“I’m on Team Ballmer,” Cuban wrote on X. “As much as I wish they circumvented the salary cap, First Steve isn’t that dumb. If he did try to feed KL money, knowing what was at stake for him personally, and his team, do you think he would let the company go bankrupt ? Knowing all creditors would be visible to the world ? They got scammed by Aspiration, along with many others. Crimes for which they pleaded guilty last week.”
Torre reported Wednesday that Leonard received a four-year deal (from 2022-25) with Aspiration, a Ballmer-backed sustainability startup that went bankrupt earlier this year. The company’s co-founder, Joe Sanberg, was arrested for alleged wire fraud. The podcaster found in bankruptcy filings that the Clippers and KL2 Aspire — Leonard’s LLC — were among Aspiration’s creditors.
One former Aspiration employee told Torre that Leonard’s deal with the company was to “circumvent the salary cap.”
The NBA confirmed in a statement to The Post earlier Wednesday that it is investigating the matter.
Cuban continued to say that he believed the Clippers, who had a sponsorship deal with Aspiration, got scammed.
“They did a $300m sponsorship deal with the clippers in 2021,” Cuban wrote. “That’s a HUGE deal. The better the team does , the more value the sponsorship has. It actually makes perfect sense that if they stole money from investors and want the clippers to succeed, why not give stolen money to help keep their best player ? It’s sad that @PabloTorre didn’t take the time to find out how these scammers pulled off their scam. The idea that the default is Ballmer is the bad guy is going to back fire on him.”
Cuban then said he’d be “happy” to discuss his thoughts further after Torre asked him to appear on his podcast.
The Clippers, in a lengthy statement shared to multiple outlets, flatly denied the allegations that they were intentionally working around the cap.
“Neither the Clippers nor Steve Ballmer circumvented the salary cap,” the team said. “The notion that Steve invested in Aspiration in order to funnel money to Kawhi Leonard is absurd. Steve invested because Aspiration’s cofounders presented themselves as committed to doing right by their customers while protecting the environment.”