Clippers salary cap punishment: five first-round picks stripped, Ballmer suspended for a year

By Jack Shaw · New York · Published: 08:20 BST

• The NBA has stripped the Los Angeles Clippers of five first-round draft picks and fined the club $30 million for breaching its salary cap circumvention rules.
• Owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for a year; Kawhi Leonard is fined $700,000 but faces no ban and keeps his contract.
• The Clippers say they “vehemently reject” the findings and will challenge them “through every avenue available to us”.

The Clippers salary cap punishment handed down on Wednesday is one of the heaviest sanctions the NBA has ever imposed on a franchise: five forfeited first-round picks, a $30 million fine, a one-year suspension for owner Steve Ballmer, and a $700,000 fine for Kawhi Leonard — who escapes without a ban and with his contract intact.

What the league found

The penalties close a near year-long investigation by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, begun last September after journalist Pablo Torre alleged the Clippers had circumvented the cap. The league said it found “a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules”.

At the centre of it sat an endorsement agreement between Leonard and Aspiration, a now-bankrupt sustainability company — described by CBS Sports as a $28 million no-show deal. Investigators also found the Clippers “initiated, facilitated and induced” agreements between Leonard and three further companies: Boingo Wireless, scoreboard maker Daktronics and insurance broker Lockton. Dave.Sport covered the widening Daktronics strand and the SEC’s interest earlier today; for the full chronological timeline of the scandal, see the running coverage on the JOE sport hub.

Why the Clippers salary cap punishment lands so hard

Read the sanctions sheet closely and the split is glaring. The organisation has been gutted; the player has been let off. Alongside Ballmer’s ban, president of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended for a year without pay and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank for six months. Leonard’s uncle and business manager, Dennis Robertson, is barred for five years from dealing with NBA teams. Leonard pays $700,000 and, per CBS Sports, is still expected to complete the trade to the Toronto Raptors agreed in June and frozen while the probe ran.

Commissioner Adam Silver said he was “deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct”, adding: “The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”

The comparison point is the 2000 Minnesota Timberwolves case: Joe Smith’s contract voided, a $3 million fine, five picks lost, owner Glen Taylor banned for a year. Leonard’s deal survives because, as CBS Sports notes, the Smith case turned on a written side agreement — evidence that made it cut-and-dried.

The five forfeited picks run from 2029 to 2033 — half a decade of draft capital gone. The Clippers called the investigation “heavily biased” and one “seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence”. But ESPN has reported there is no formal appeal or arbitration route with the league, and that the NBPA has signed off on every penalty — leaving the franchise to fight alone, and probably in court.

So: has the NBA drawn a line under cap circumvention, or has it just shown stars that the club carries the risk while the player walks? Tell us where you land — and catch up on how the federal side of this story is developing.