Ballmer Ends His Clippers Fight After Paying $30 Million

Steve Ballmer paid the NBA’s $30 million Clippers fine on Sept. 13 and dropped the legal fight he had promised 11 days earlier. He still disputes the findings. He said team owners should support, not distract.

The last NBA owner who took a cap penalty in public this way was Minnesota’s Glen Taylor in 2000. That is also the only time the league has given forfeited first-round picks back.

Ballmer Paid the Fine and Dropped the Fight

On Sept. 2 the league ruled that the Clippers broke salary-cap rules tied to Kawhi Leonard’s off-court deals. Ballmer’s club answered with a letter to commissioner Adam Silver that called the probe a witch hunt and said it was exploring every legal remedy. The same letter said Ballmer had spent nearly $50 million to fund the investigation run by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and that his reputation had been irreparably damaged.

On Sept. 13 he reversed. The fine, he said, has been paid. The Clippers will comply. There will be no court case from the owner’s chair.

This has been a very difficult time for everybody associated with the Clippers, and for that, I have sincere regrets. I want to apologize to our fans, employees, and my fellow NBA team owners for the distraction and distress this matter has caused, for which I accept responsibility as principal owner.

Steve Ballmer, Clippers principal owner, Sept. 13 statement

He added that disagreements with the report remain, and that this is not where he wants to focus. The challenges ahead of us are significant, but so is our resolve, he said. He will not be in the building to run that next stretch. Silver suspended him from all league and team activities for one year.

Five Firsts, $30 Million and a Year on the Sideline

The Sept. 2 ruling is the largest cap penalty the NBA has issued. The Clippers forfeit five first-round draft picks, one in each draft from 2029 through 2033, and were fined $30 million. The National Basketball Players Association signed an agreement that those penalties are final and binding on all parties.

THE NBA PENALTIES

The club also sits under a five-year league compliance program. Wachtell Lipton is still taking information, and the league said it will consider further action as appropriate. Ballmer’s check does not close that file.

Investigators said the Clippers opened off-court income with four companies doing business with the team: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance. They said the club induced those deals by offering team business, paid personal expenses for Leonard and his representatives, and failed to report improper asks made through Robertson.

THE FOUR SPONSOR DEALS

• Aspiration Partners: A $28 million endorsement; Leonard was paid $21 million before the firm collapsed. Ballmer put in $50 million in September 2021, then $10 million more, for $60 million. The Clippers announced a $300 million team sponsorship with the same company.
• Daktronics: The firm that built the Intuit Dome video board. A senior Clippers executive specified $3 million per year for two years, and Daktronics paid it.
• Boingo and Lockton: Zucker connected Robertson with those firms and Daktronics in June 2020. Within about two months Leonard had multimillion, multiyear deals. Combined pay from the three non-Aspiration deals was $18 million, all of it paid by August 2021.

Aspiration’s co-founder, Joseph Sanberg, took a 14-year federal prison sentence on June 1 after a $248 million fraud case. Ballmer has said he was conned by that company. The league’s report still held him for approving a Clippers business deal he knew was a precondition for Aspiration’s endorsement with Leonard, and for failing to create conditions under which his organization followed the rules.

A $250,000 Warning From 2015

The NBA called the Clippers a prior offender. In 2015, in a similar setup, the club tried to help an endorsement for DeAndre Jordan with an incoming team sponsor while it was trying to sign him. The league investigated, found a violation, and fined the Clippers $250,000.

The report also said the club already knew the risk around Leonard. In July 2019, when he was a free agent after a title in Toronto, Robertson asked several teams for benefits the CBA bars, including equity, housing, private transport, and off-court income. Leonard signed with Los Angeles anyway. Ballmer has owned the team since 2014.

The Clippers later offered a novel reading: that the rules allow a team to introduce a player to a business partner if the player or his representative asked for the introduction. Investigators said that reading does not match the salary cap circumvention rules in the CBA, or even the way Ballmer, Zucker, and Frank had described those rules themselves.

Leonard, through his new agent Harrison Gaines, said he entered the deals in good faith and had no knowledge of any intent to get around the cap. He accepted responsibility for lapses by people in his inner circle. He was not suspended. His contract was not voided. That is the outcome that lets a trade to Toronto still move.

Minnesota Got Two Picks Back by Folding

On Oct. 25, 2000, commissioner David Stern stripped the Minnesota Timberwolves of their own first-round picks in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, fined the club $3.5 million, and voided Joe Smith’s contracts. The secret paper was a promise of as much as $86 million after a run of cheap one-year deals, written down and then unearthed in a fight between agents.

Taylor admitted the illegal contracts. He and vice president of basketball operations Kevin McHale then did the one thing that changed the penalty.

HOW MINNESOTA GOT PICKS BACK

1. October 25, 2000: Stern directs forfeiture of Minnesota’s first-round picks in 2001 through 2005, fines the team $3.5 million, and voids Smith’s deals.
2. December 9, 2000: Taylor and McHale agree to leaves without going through arbitration. The NBA restores the 2003 first-round pick.
3. December 28, 2003: Stern restores the 2005 first-round pick, citing the other penalties and the team’s conduct since the Smith matter ended. Minnesota’s remaining losses are 2001, 2002, and 2004.
4. September 2, 2026: The NBA takes the Clippers’ firsts in 2029 through 2033, fines the club $30 million, and suspends Ballmer for a year.
5. September 13, 2026: Ballmer says the fine is paid, drops the legal fight, and asks to put the chapter behind the club.

Stern’s 2003 line was plain. In light of the other penalties, and the team’s conduct since the matter concluded, he said, we feel it is appropriate to restore the pick. McHale, when he took the leave in 2000, put it shorter: it’s time we got something back to put this thing to rest.

Nobody in the league office has promised Los Angeles a similar return. The Clippers’ five lost firsts sit further out than Minnesota’s did, in 2029 through 2033, and the club is a second-time offender. The only documented way an NBA team has ever gotten a forfeited first-round pick restored is still the way Taylor went: take the hit in public, skip the long legal fight, and wait on conduct after the fact.

The Bylaws Left Him No Appeal

Ballmer’s Sept. 2 letter asked for an ethical and impartial arbitration. Players get that track. The union declined to use it here, and the penalties were bargained as final. A league official said there is no appeal path inside the bylaws for this case. The court fight Ballmer previewed was always an outside bet against his own partners.

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.

Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, Sept. 2 league release

An August leak had claimed investigators found no evidence that Ballmer funneled money through sponsors to pay Leonard. The Sept. 2 report did not clear him. It named him for knowing help on off-court income, for the Aspiration precondition, and for the compliance failure. Eleven days of defiant letters did not open a door the union had already locked.

The Board of Governors meets in New York on Sept. 14 and 15. Silver is expected to speak there for the first time since the penalties landed. Fellow owners are the audience Ballmer apologized to by name.

The Raptors Deal Still Needs a Governor

On June 30 the Clippers agreed to send Leonard to Toronto for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 first-round swap, and two second-round picks. Leonard has the 2026-27 season left at $50.3 million. On July 9 the Raptors paused. The league had told them they would assume the risk of any penalty that hit the player. Leonard was not suspended, so that risk shrank. The papers still are not signed.

Journalist Pablo Torre wrote on Sept. 11 that the league has to approve a temporary Clippers governor before it can process the trade. Ballmer is banned. Zucker, one of his listed alternates, is banned with him. The other name on the paper is co-owner Dennis Wong, Ballmer’s former college roommate, who invested $1.99 million in Aspiration nine days before Leonard received a $1.75 million payment from the company. Whether Silver will let that alternate sit is an open question the apology does not answer.

WHAT STILL HAS TO CLOSE

• A sitting governor: The Clippers must name an alternate Silver will accept, then an interim executive for the year Ballmer is out.
• The Toronto trade: Ingram, Dick, and the pick package cannot move until that chair is filled and the league signs off.
• The open investigative file: Wachtell Lipton is still receiving information. The league said further action remains on the table.

Ballmer will miss the first year of the rebuild he just promised. The five lost firsts do not come due until 2029. Minnesota’s owners learned that a public folding can, years later, buy a pick back. Los Angeles just ran the first half of that play, with a prior offense already on the ledger and no promise attached to the second half.