NBA Crushes Clippers After Kawhi Leonard Investigation

The NBA paid a law firm to confirm what every rival GM already knew for free.

The NBA has concluded its investigation of the Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, and the punishments are major. The league announced Wednesday that the independent probe, conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, uncovered "a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules," and as such the team will have to forfeit five first-round picks. The NBA also issued fines and suspensions to various members of the Clippers organization. The NBA opened an investigation almost one year ago, after Pablo Torre reported on a bizarre arrangement between Leonard and the scam greenwashing company Aspiration, in which the NBA player seemingly had a no-show marketing deal designed to funnel money from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer to Leonard and avoid the salary cap in the process. The law firm's report can read in full here; it's a breezy 35 pages. As a result, the NBA docked the Clippers five-first rounders, one in each draft from 2029 to 2033. The team is also fined $30 million; Ballmer and team president Gillian Zucker are both suspended for one year, Zucker without pay; Clips GM Lawrence Frank is suspended for six months without pay; the organization will be subject to an NBA compliance and monitoring program for five years; Leonard will have to pay $700,000 to the NBA; and Leonard's nefarious uncle Dennis Robertson has been banned from dealing with anyone or anything related to the NBA for five years.

Read it at Defector ↗

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