It’s no accident that the latest revelations in the Kawhi Leonard salary cap circumvention and “no show” $48 million endorsement scandal with Clippers team sponsor Aspiration happened to drop hours before the Clippers’ Media Day to open camp.
While this latest reporting from the Pablo Torre Finds Out (PTFO) podcast is not as individually damning as previous revelations, it adds to the growing mountain of questions that, when viewed as a whole, are difficult for Ballmer and the Clippers to answer. Questions that the NBA’s formal investigation into the matter will ask.
Those latest revelations are:
• Clippers owner Steve Ballmer (via his philanthropic organization, Ballmer Group) made a $1.875 million donation to Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sanberg’s charity, the Golden State Opportunity Foundation, in November 2024 — 10 months after the Clippers had ended its business relationship with Aspiration and Ballmer had claimed he lost his investments in the company. Ballmer said he was “duped” and defrauded by Sanberg, as were other investors.
NEW: Steve Ballmer quietly donated $1.875M to charity of Aspiration co-founder who "conned" him — 1.5+ years after Clippers ended deal, as feds closed in.
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 29, 2025
"It does not make any iota of sense," an insider says, "to be both hoodwinked and bamboozled yet continuously giving money." pic.twitter.com/xdx2WgGkex
The Clippers noted that Ballmer had been donating to this charity since 2018, long before Aspiration became a sponsor of the Clippers or helped provide environmental credits. (Aspiration was a “green bank” company whose business model was to plant trees to gain these credits, and then sell them to companies that needed them. Sanberg has pleaded guilty to defrauding investors of $248 million through the business.) It should also be noted that there are no claims that this charity itself was fraudulent.
While a donation to a charitable cause is not in and of itself damning, it suggests a relationship between Ballmer and Sanberg that existed before, and seemed to continue after, the Clippers’ business with Aspiration had ended in such a messy manner.
• While Leonard’s uncle and business manager, Dennis Robertson — “Uncle Dennis” — gets the headlines for his audacity, Leonard does have a legal and traditional agent, Mitch Frankel. PTFO has screenshots from former Aspiration general counsel Mike Shuckerow, dated November 2022, when Frankel texted an Aspiration executive repeatedly for an overdue endorsement payment. Leonard was owed his quarterly endorsement payment ($1.75 million) and it was more than a month late.
This late payment ultimately became one of the hardest-to-explain-away aspects of the allegations for the Clippers: In December 2022, when it was already clear that Aspiration was a failing company, Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong donated $2 million to the company. Nine days later, Leonard got his $1.75 million payment.
The core of the case being investigated by the NBA — and uncovered by Torre — is that Ballmer invested $50 million in the “green bank” company Aspiration, which went on to become a $300 million sponsor of the Clippers team in 2021. Later, the Clippers purchased $100 million in those green credits from Aspiration as part of Ballmer’s effort to make the Clippers’ new home, the Intuit Dome, carbon neutral. Leonard signed a four-year, $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration, a deal that grew to $48 million at one point when he got $20 million in company stock (which is now worthless).
Leonard did nothing for the company as an endorser that can be seen publicly, leading to the accusations that this was a “no-show” endorsement designed to circumvent the salary cap. While it was stipulated in his endorsement contract that he would do so, there is no evidence that Leonard performed any days of work for the company, participated in promotional events or marketing efforts, or even made a social media post about the company.
Aspiration is now bankrupt, and its CEO, Sanberg, has pleaded guilty to $248 million in fraud. Ballmer said he was “duped” like other investors and that the Clippers ended their team sponsor relationship with Aspiration after it defaulted on its obligations. He and the Clippers have maintained that they knew nothing about Leonard’s endorsement deal with Aspiration except that it existed. Ballmer vehemently denied the allegation that the Clippers used Leonard’s Aspiration endorsement to circumvent the NBA salary cap. Ballmer went on to make a second, $10 million investment in Aspiration in March 2023, despite it being clear at that point the company was failing and headed toward bankruptcy.
The NBA hired an independent law firm to do its investigation. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that the burden of proof in this case lies with the league to demonstrate that the Clippers did something wrong, and that he “would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety.”
However, the accumulation of evidence makes that appearance seem worse and worse. Here is what one current NBA head coach texted Pablo Torre, as said on his podcast: “This should be embarrassing for the league. I know teams do little side deals, but what happened here is so obvious.”
The league’s potential punishments can include taking away future draft picks (up to five), fining and suspending team executives who knew, and even potentially voiding Leonard’s contract (although that seems unlikely).
