The NBA's investigative report into the Los Angeles Clippers describes a front office that fabricated records and steered companies into sham endorsement deals for Kawhi Leonard.

The report, conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and detailed by the Los Angeles Times on Thursday, Sept. 10, goes well beyond the penalties the league announced Sept. 2. It lays out how the Clippers orchestrated endorsement deals for Leonard with four companies: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance. All four were seeking business relationships with the team.

Fabricated paper trail

Investigators found that Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker sent emails to Boingo, Daktronics and Lockton in 2020. The emails implied she was responding to their requests for introductions to Leonard. The report found "no documentary evidence" that any company genuinely initiated those requests. Investigators called the emails an effort to "create the appearance" of compliance.

Zucker's husband was then chairman of Boingo, a wi-fi company. The report says the Clippers implied that signing Leonard to endorsement deals would help the companies win team contracts. The Clippers also assured them the endorsement payments would be offset by other business with the franchise.

The three deals totaled $18 million. Investigators called them "peculiar." None of the companies had ever signed an endorsement deal "of remotely the same financial magnitude," and none has since. The deals were never publicly announced and did not require Leonard to do anything for the money.

The Aspiration deal

The largest arrangement involved Aspiration. The report describes a $48 million, four-year deal the Clippers guided Aspiration into offering Leonard, though earlier accounts placed the contracted amount at $28 million. When co-founder Joseph Sanberg presented the deal to Aspiration executives, one wrote in an email: "I have no idea why we'd do this."

Sanberg assured them the Clippers would adjust their contract with Aspiration to cover the expense. Seeing the deal was "cashflow neutral," the executives agreed. Inside the Clippers' front office, the Aspiration contract for environmental services was described as "super shady" in a text between executives cited in the report.

Owner Steve Ballmer told a television interviewer the deal was Aspiration's idea. "They were off to the races on their own. We weren't involved," Ballmer said. Investigators found that claim to be false. The Clippers initiated contact, connected Aspiration with a business agent already under team contract and provided proposed deal terms.

Penalties and fallout

The NBA fined the Clippers a record $30 million on Sept. 2 and stripped the franchise of five consecutive first-round draft picks from 2029 through 2033. Ballmer was suspended from all league and team activities for one year. Zucker was suspended without pay for one year. Lawrence Frank, president of basketball operations, received a six-month suspension without pay. Leonard was fined $700,000, and his uncle Dennis Robertson was banned from conducting business with NBA teams for five years.

Commissioner Adam Silver said in a Sept. 2 statement that the penalties reflected the seriousness of the violations, according to LA Mag.

Ballmer maintains he was a victim, pointing the finger at Sanberg. Ballmer invested $60 million in Aspiration and filed a victim impact statement in Sanberg's federal fraud case. Sanberg pleaded guilty to fraud charges tied to Aspiration's collapse and was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.

The Clippers called the investigation heavily biased in a Sept. 2 statement, saying the league sought to justify a predetermined narrative. The franchise has no available appeal within the league. Hoops Rumors reported that the players' association declined to pursue arbitration, leaving a lawsuit against the NBA as the Clippers' only recourse.

The franchise was previously fined $250,000 in 2015 for a similar endorsement scheme involving then-free agent DeAndre Jordan. The only prior major NBA salary cap circumvention case, in 2000, saw the Minnesota Timberwolves initially lose five first-round picks but recoup two after then-owner Glen Taylor and then-president Kevin McHale accepted season-long suspensions and kept a low profile.