Steve Ballmer Has Everything to Prove Innocence as Clippers Owner Breaks Silence on Controversy

The Los Angeles Clippers find themselves at the center of one of the NBA’s most scrutinized off-court stories in recent memory. A report by podcaster Pablo Torre accused the franchise of salary cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard and a company, Aspiration, in which Clippers owner Steve Ballmer had invested. Questions swirled about whether Leonard’s no-show arrangement violated league rules and whether Ballmer played any part in facilitating it.

In an interview with ESPN today, Ballmer came forward to address the controversy directly, answering questions himself and providing context behind the Clippers’ dealings with Leonard and Aspiration. For the first time, he publicly laid out the timeline and reasoning behind the transactions, aiming to clarify misconceptions about the organization’s compliance with NBA regulations.

Ballmer explained the NBA’s rules and how the Clippers adhered to them: “We, the Clippers, have abided by the salary cap circumvention rules because that’s the right thing to do and we have done that. I happen to think it’s a very important rule in terms of promoting competitiveness and equal playing field across the league. But whether I agreed with it or not, it’s the rule and we’ve absolutely abided by that. There’s obviously writing in the league rule book on this, but I can make it really simple. We cannot pay a player anything beyond what’s in his standard player contract, and we cannot cause anybody else to pay the player what’s beyond their standard contract. And that would include, for example, sponsors, endorsers. That is forbidden. We can’t do that. And we didn’t, certainly in this instance.”

This is a developing story.

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