The Los Angeles Clippers may have committed a cardinal sin by Adam Silver’s standards.
Pablo Torre’s thorough, seven-month-long investigation revealed that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer may have used a now-bankrupt company called Aspiration to circumvent the salary cap and pay Kawhi Leonard for a no-show job.
Ballmer and the Clippers, of course, have denied all wrongdoing, even in spite of the thousands of pages of evidence tying shady payments and Ballmer’s $50 million investment in the company.
Now, in a follow-up episode, one of Torre’s sources revealed that the company, which was already facing financial issues, had Leonard’s payments as a “critical priority.”
More shockingly, they received a $1.99 million donation from a company owned by Dennis Wong, one of the team’s minority owners, at the very same time one of Leonard’s payments was running late.
“It really looks like the Clippers, through Dennis Wong, put in $2 million in order for Aspiration to be able to make the $1.75 million payment to Kawhi. That’s what it looks like, to me,” the source said.
