Owner Steve Ballmer of the Los Angeles Clippers looks on during the game against the Detroit Pistons at Intuit Dome on Dec. 28, 2025 in Inglewood, California.
Katelyn Mulcahy | Getty Images
The NBA on Wednesday said it had suspended Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer for one year as part of a broad array of sanctions on the basketball team and its executives for violating the league’s salary cap circumvention rules related to star player Kawhi Leonard.
Ballmer «knowingly» sought to help Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities, and approved a business deal that «that he knew was a precondition for Aspiration to enter into an endorsement agreement with Mr. Leonard, and for his failure to create conditions under which his organization abided by the NBA’s circumvention rules,» the NBA said.
The Clippers were also fined $30 million, and will forfeit five first-round picks in the NBA draft, one each year beginning with the 2029 draft. The Clippers and its personnel will be subject to a compliance and monitoring program overseen by the league office for five years, according to the NBA.
The league said that an investigation of the Clippers by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz «found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations» by the organization, which had previously violated salary cap circumvention rules.
The violations included «initiating off-court income opportunities between Mr. Leonard and four companies doing business with the team: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance,» and facilitating endorsement deals between those companies and Leonard, a summary of the firm’s report said.
The Clippers also induced those companies to enter into deals with Leonard by offering them business from the team, paid personal expenses for Leonard and his representatives, and failed «to report improper solicitations for off-court income opportunities made on Mr. Leonard’s behalf through his then-business manager, Dennis Robertson,» the summary said.
Leonard was ordered to pay the league $700,000 in connection with his own violation, which included pressuring the team to help him obtain off-court income opportunities and failing to reimburse payments by the Clippers for personal expenses.
And the NBA banned Robertson from conducting business or otherwise engaging with the league’s teams and their affiliates for players or personnel for five years.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, in a statement on the findings, said, «The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans,» said
«I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations,» Silver said.
In addition to Ballmer’s suspension, «Clippers President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year for being primarily and directly culpable for the impermissible endorsement arrangements and for providing false and misleading statements to investigators,» the league said.
Clippers President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank was suspended without pay for six months for his involvement with «impermissible endorsement arrangements and for approving impermissible expenses incurred by Mr. Leonard and his family,» the NBA said.
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