Clippers owner Steve Ballmer suspended 1 year in Kawhi Leonard case
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Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has been suspended for one year as the NBA handed down sweeping penalties against the franchise over violations of the league’s salary-cap circumvention rules involving star Kawhi Leonard.
The Clippers were fined $30 million and ordered to forfeit five first-round draft picks, one each from 2029 through 2033. Leonard was fined $700,000.
The sanctions followed a nearly yearlong independent investigation conducted by law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz into the Clippers’ dealings with Leonard and companies that had business relationships with the team.
The NBA said the Clippers initiated off-court income opportunities for Leonard with four companies doing business with the franchise: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance.
The investigation found that the Clippers facilitated endorsement agreements, offered team business to help induce the companies to enter into deals with Leonard, paid personal expenses on behalf of Leonard and his representatives, and failed to report improper efforts to secure additional income for the player.
Investigators found that Leonard received $66 million in endorsement payments from the four companies. Ballmer was found to have knowingly sought to help Leonard obtain off-court income and approved a business arrangement linked to Leonard’s endorsement deal with Aspiration.
Aside from Ballmer’s suspension, Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank was suspended for six months, while business operations president Gillian Zucker was suspended for one year.
The Clippers rejected the league’s findings and said they intend to challenge the sanctions.
The case again places the Clippers’ ownership history under scrutiny.
Before Ballmer bought the franchise for $2 billion in 2014, former owner Donald Sterling was banned for life from the NBA after recordings of him making racist remarks became public.
Ballmer’s case is unrelated to Sterling’s and stems instead from the league’s findings that the Clippers circumvented salary-cap rules involving Leonard.
More than a decade after taking over the franchise, Ballmer is now facing one of the most severe sets of sanctions imposed on an NBA ownership group.
