Clippers Minority Owner Invested $1.99M a Week Before Kawhi Leonard was Owed Money From No-Show Deal, Reveals Pablo Torre

The hole for Steve Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers just keeps getting deeper and it doesn’t look like a tree is going to be planted in it. That’s because it turns out that Pablo Torre Finds Out, the podcast that broke the story of Kawhi Leonard’s alleged no-show job from which he made millions of dollars, allegedly to circumvent the NBA salary cap, didn’t lay all of its cards on the table at once.

The Clippers have been scrambling to find a way out of being on the receiving end of the NBA’s hammer of justice, putting out statements refuting Torre’s reporting and saying that all the facts will come out in due time. The team claims that Ballmer was defrauded by scammers and not, in fact, using the tree-planting company Aspiration as a way to pay Leonard more than what he was owed from his contract with the team.

Torre came out today with new receipts that show that when Leonard was owed another $1.75 million from Aspiration, as the company was in the midst of going under, a curiously timed investment of $1.99 million was made by a company called DEA 88 Investments.

“1.99 million comes in nine days before Kawhi Leonard is scheduled to get paid, amid the total collapse of the economic premise of this entire company, but here’s what’s even stranger,” Torre said.

“According to our review of Aspiration’s cap table and bank statements, there is no evidence that prior to December 6, 2022 DEA 88 Investments LP had ever invested in Aspiration before,” he added.

Finding it curious that a new company would choose to invest at that precise moment the amount that Leonard was paid just over a week later, Torre did some more digging.

After a thorough investigation, he found that the registered agent for DEA 88 Investments was Dennis Wong, aka the vice chairman of the Clippers, the college roommate of Steve Ballmer and the only other person besides Ballmer listed as a team owner.

Wong owns 1% of the Clippers, and can often be found sitting courtside next to Ballmer. Torre showed video of him being present at various important team functions, such as when ground was broken for the Intuit Dome. Ballmer even gave Wong credit at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new stadium for helping get the project off the ground.

Worse yet, Wong’s daughter worked for Aspiration, which really undercuts the plausible deniability he and Ballmer have in this situation.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said yesterday that the burden of proof is on the NBA to prove any wrongdoing by the Clippers. If the firm hired by the league is half as diligent as Torre and his team have been, then it looks like this is only going to get worse for the Clippers.

At this point, nobody knows if Torre is keeping his powder dry with any more damning evidence, so if the Clippers put out any more statements, they’d better be careful that they don’t leave themselves open to any more gotcha moments. This is getting worse by the day for L.A.’s second team, and it’s all thanks to some dynamite investigative reporting.