Opposing NBA owners could drive league’s Clippers investigation

The NBA is digging into Kawhi Leonard’s endorsement deal with Aspiration, and longtime insider Marc Stein says the reaction of other owners may determine just how far the probe goes.

“The league investigated in 2019 and found no rules were broken, but they said if further evidence compels us to look at this again, we will,” Stein said on the ALL NBA Podcast. “That’s obviously going to happen now. And like I said, I really think how the other teams react to this is going to drive it. Adam Silver ultimately has to answer to the other owners.”

Leonard signed a four-year, $28 million endorsement with Aspiration in 2022, a deal employees later described on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast as a “no-show job” meant to keep Leonard in Los Angeles.

Aspiration has since gone bankrupt, and the league recently retained law firm Wachtell Lipton — the same group that handled the Donald Sterling and Robert Sarver investigations — to conduct its review.

For Ballmer, the scrutiny is magnified because of his stature among owners.

“Steve Ballmer is already known as the richest owner in the NBA, as an owner who has resources that no one else has,” Stein said. “You saw the building that they’ve built. The Intuit Dome is the fanciest building on the NBA map. You see the system that the NBA now operates in — those aprons.

“I mean, how many times… there aren’t many All-NBA shows that I come on that we don’t have to talk about the aprons. It’s a part of our daily vocabulary. That’s a lot because of Steve Ballmer.”

The league’s new collective bargaining agreement put unprecedented restrictions on high-spending teams, a direct response to Ballmer’s willingness to pay luxury tax penalties without hesitation.

Now the Clippers’ spending power, their $2 billion arena and a sponsorship-turned-investigation have collided, putting the franchise back under the microscope six years after the NBA first reviewed Leonard’s recruitment.