Kawhi Leonard, Clippers Hit With Another Cap Circumvention Allegation

The Kawhi Leonard saga doesn’t appear to be close to a resolution, and the latest reports that surfaced on Thursday night have only made an already difficult situation even stickier.

With the trade sending Leonard from the Los Angeles Clippers back to the Toronto Raptors still on hold because of the Aspiration scandal, the man behind much of the investigation, Pablo Torre, has revealed another potential problem.

According to Torre’s latest source, Leonard also had another hidden, multimillion-dollar sponsorship with the Clippers’ scoreboard manufacturer, a company called Daktronics.

The anonymous source said:

“This was talked about just openly within the organization and from people working on the project, that Kawhi was a spokesperson for Daktronics. It was just the biggest thing that was openly joked about among people working on the project who knew about this, as it was 1000% a way to circumvent the salary cap… People at Daktronics and people within the Clippers organization themselves had told me about this multimillion-dollar deal with Kawhi and Daktronics. They’re not a company that you would see a celebrity endorse. The Clippers were technically kind of funding it. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi,”

The 34-year-old Leonard is supposed to be entering the third and final year of the three-year, $149.5 million maximum contract extension he originally signed with the Clippers in 2024. He averaged a career-high 27.9 points per game to go along with 6.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 65 appearances last season