New evidence in Kawhi Leonard salary cap scheme looks bad for the Clippers

The Los Angeles Clippers have been accused of circumventing the salary cap in order to make payments to Kawhi Leonard, and the team looks even worse after some new evidence was uncovered.

Sports journalist Pablo Torre originally reported on Sept. 3 that the Clippers used a phony endorsement deal with a tree-planting company called Aspiration in order to funnel additional money to Leonard. The former NBA Finals MVP appears to have had a $28 million endorsement deal with the organization despite never doing any marketing or actual endorsing.

On Thursday, Torre shared new documents that he uncovered in his investigation. Among the documents are statements showing that Leonard’s company, KL2Aspire LLC, received a payment of $1.75 million from Aspiration on Dec. 15, 2022. A former Aspiration employee told Torre that Dennis Robertson, Leonard’s uncle and manager, was one of many people looking to be paid at the time but there was “no money to be spent.”

According to the records that Torre obtained, the payment to Leonard was made nine days after Aspiration received a wire transfer payment of just under $2 million from a company called DEA 88 Investments L.P. That company, Torre learned, is registered to Dennis Wong, who is the vice chairman of the Clippers and team owner Steve Ballmer’s former college roommate.

Wong owns roughly 1% of the Clippers, with Ballmer owning the other 99%. Wong had not previously invested in Aspiration prior to DEA 88 Investments L.P. making the $2 million payment, which a former Aspiration employee says was a massive red flag.

“It is beyond shocking. I will tell you, I knew that the board had put money in in December to make payroll and make rent and all that, material. It is not a rational investment that someone would make,” the former employee told Torre. “So, it is very shocking to me that $2 million was made as an investment by Dennis Wong, Steve Ballmer’s partner, a week before $1.75 million was paid to Kawhi.”

The Clippers responded to Torre’s latest reporting with a new statement calling Aspiration a “house of cards that defrauded Steve and many others.”