NBA Owners Want to Know Why Kawhi Leonard Signed Below-Max Contract Extension With Los Angeles Clippers in 2024

NBA owners want to know why Kawhi Leonard signed a below-max contract extension with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2024, according to Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated.

Leonard, who allegedly received a no-work contract from a now-bankrupt environmental company called “Aspiration” so that he could be paid more money from the Clippers without it counting against the NBA’s salary rules, signed a three-year, $149.5 million extension in January 2024.

“The board of governors meeting is in New York next week,” Mannix said. “And I’m guessing this is going to come up very early in that meeting. I’ve seen it suggested that the owners don’t want any part of (the) investigation here because that could open them up to a world of legal problems. They don’t want to wind up on the wrong side of their own investigation. 

“But I will tell you what ownership sources have told me over the last few days is that they want to know about the money. In 2021, Kawhi signed at the time what was a full max contract. No issue there. In 2024, he took less than the max. Now the narrative back then was that he did it to help the team. Great. But if he was getting compensated another way, that’s a different story because the Clippers are a taxpaying team. An extra few million dollars per year that gets multiplied in tax penalties and that gets dispersed to other teams.”

On an episode of the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, seven anonymous former employees for “Aspiration” said Leonard got $48 million for a “no-show job” intended to “circumvent the (NBA) salary cap.”

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who invested $50 million in the now bankrupt green banking company, told ESPN that “Aspiration” asked him to introduce the company to Leonard, but he denied he knew about the endorsement contract the sides eventually signed or that he directed the company to do so.

Ballmer said the introduction came in November 2021, three months after the Clippers had agreed to a four-year, $173 million extension with Leonard. Two months earlier, in September 2021, the Clippers announced a lucrative $300 million partnership with “Aspiration.”