The Los Angeles Clippers have been accused of engaging in salary cap circumvention with star forward Kawhi Leonard, according to a bombshell Wednesday report from investigative journalist Pablo Torre. The story stems from a March 2025 bankruptcy filing of Aspiration, a now-bankrupt sustainability company that received $50 million in funding from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.
Aspiration has since dealt with accusations of fraud, and co-founder Joseph Sanberg has since pleaded guilty to defrauding multiple investors. That filing included a list of creditors to whom Aspiration still owed money. Among them? KL2 Aspire LLC, a corporation that lists Kawhi Leonard as its manager.
Those filings show that Aspiration still owes Leonard $7 million. Yet Torre’s reporting did not find a single instance in which Leonard endorsed or even mentioned Aspiration, as one would expect in an endorsement arrangement. A number of other celebrities, including Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers, did provide endorsements for the company. A document Torre obtained, which Leonard signed, showed that Leonard was to be paid $28 million in cash over the course of four years between 2022 and 2025 as long as he was playing for the Clippers. One former Aspiration employee in the finance department said on Torre’s podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, that the deal “was to circumvent the salary cap, lol.”
The NBA said on Wednesday afternoon that it was launching an investigation into the allegations.
So, what does all of this mean? Let’s dig into the NBA’s rules on salary cap circumvention in an attempt to find out.
What is salary cap circumvention?
If you’d like the legal definition of cap circumvention, it can be found between pages 339 and 346 of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. The relevant section for our purposes can be found in Article XIII, Section 1(b):
“It shall constitute a violation of Section 1(a) above for a Team (or Team Affiliate) to enter into an agreement or understanding with any sponsor or business partner or third party under which such…
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