EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsLA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard and his uncle and business adviser Dennis Robertson have been interviewed by NBA investigators amid the league's probe into allegations the team circumvented the salary cap to compensate Leonard, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and other team executives have also sat for interviews, those sources said, as have executives for Aspiration, the now-defunct green banking company at the center of the allegations.Prior to Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday in San Antonio, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that investigation was "far along," and that the league is "close to the point now where I think we need to wrap this up."He did not specify a timeline for when the investigation would conclude but said the Clippers need "to understand what situation they are going to be operating under, and so do the other 29 teams."Publicly, the Clippers and Ballmer have denied the allegations and have been adamant there is no evidence supporting them.But privately, some Clippers officials have grown frustrated trying to prove innocence for a violation that they say they didn't commit, according to several sources with knowledge of their thinking. Despite their certainty that they did nothing wrong, team officials seem less certain about the outcome of the high-profile investigation or whether the league's richest owner will face punishment, the sources said.ESPN spoke to people in and around the NBA about the investigation's possible outcomes. While it's unclear what the probe has uncovered about the salary cap-circumvention allegations, some results could prompt pushback from the team, the National Basketball Players Association or other owners.The NBA launched its investigation in September 2025 following a series of podcasts from Pablo Torre, a podcaster and former ESPN contributor, who cited internal documents that showed Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration through his personal LLC in September 2021. That month, the Clippers also signed a $300 million deal with Aspiration, making the company the "first founding partner" of the Intuit Dome.Six months later, Aspiration signed its $28 million endorsement deal with Leonard. An unnamed employee who purportedly worked for the banking company told Torre that Leonard's sponsorship deal "was to circumvent the salary cap."While Ballmer has said he introduced Leonard to Aspiration, he told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne in September 2025 he had no knowledge of the player's deal and denied he directed the company to strike one.A source close to Leonard's camp also denied the allegations to ESPN, saying that the Clippers weren't involved with Leonard's deal beyond the 2021 introduction, that there was never any mention of the salary cap or attempts to circumvent it, and that the language in Leonard's Aspiration deal was similar to other his other sponsorship agreements.The source said members of Leonard's camp "had nothing to hide" from the NBA's investigators and said, "Bottom line - it wasn't a 'no show' deal.'"Under the rules of the NBA's 2023 collective bargaining agreement, teams can be punished for circumventing the league's salary cap. Penalties include fines up to $7.5 million, direct forfeiture of draft picks, voiding any player contract and a suspension -- up to a year -- for any team personnel found to have engaged in such a violation.Outside of punishing the team for salary cap circumvention, it's unclear what penalties the team could face - and multiple sources with knowledge of the process and with the NBPA's thinking suggested that some lesser charges pose complications.Punishing the team for not knowing enough about Leonard's sponsorship deal with Aspiration, for instance, is challenging, some of these sources said, because NBA teams are not allowed to be involved in or have knowledge of player sponsorship deals outside of the team, per the NBA Operations Manual.Two sources with knowledge of the National Basketball Player's Association's thinking said if the team were to be punished in such a way, the NBPA would likely push back."The NBPA would and should lose its mind over that," one of those sources said.Punishing the team for a conflict of interest - that is, having a sponsorship deal with a company that separately engaged in a sponsorship deal with a player on its team - is also challenging, the sources with knowledge of the process said. One called it a "slippery slope" - as there are other examples of teams and players across the league having separate sponsorship deals with the same company.If the league presented a lesser punishment that the Clippers disputed, the team could seek the intervention of a "system arbitrator," a person appointed by the NBA and the NBPA to settle such disputes, as ESPN has previously reported. That person could then review the evidence and grant or deny Silver the ability to punish the team.Some of the sources with knowledge of the investigative process cautioned against the idea that Silver would seek to punish the Clippers because of any public pressure to do so.Rather, they said the most important people that Silver must address are the other 29 NBA owners - and that, however the matter unfolds, Silver will be required to explain the end results to rival owners in a way that they consider fair.Two of the sources said that if Silver tried to administer punishment to the Clippers without clear evidence of guilt, other teams and owners could consider it a worrying precedent."I respect Adam, and I don't think he's stupid," said one of the sources, who has worked closely with Silver through the years. "If Wachtell delivers the report that says, 'Well, we don't have it,' I don't think Adam is going to push it further."
