{"id":516494,"date":"2026-08-17T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=516494"},"modified":"2026-08-17T13:00:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:00:56","slug":"nba-lacks-evidence-ballmer-paid-kawhi-via-firms","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/nba-lacks-evidence-ballmer-paid-kawhi-via-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA lacks evidence Ballmer paid Kawhi via firms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Basketball Association has found no evidence that Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the salary cap, according to 3 people familiar with talks between the two sides in the past few days.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, the league is focused on whether the Clippers\u2019 introduction of Kawhi to team sponsors violates NBA rules prohibiting salary cap circumvention, the people close to the situation revealed.<\/p>\n<p>The NBA is investigating if Ballmer\u2019s team is guilty of &#8220;failure to supervise&#8221; employees. Still, it is unclear what specific rule the Clippers would have violated or what the penalties would be if this is proved.<\/p>\n<p>The almost 1-year probe into salary cap circumvention allegations expanded beyond Kawhi\u2019s deal with Aspiration, the now-defunct green banking company at the center of the scandal, to at least 3 additional firms that also had deals with Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p>Despite that, the NBA presented no evidence that the Clippers owner funneled money to Kawhi. The league has not yet made an official comment on the latest information.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The NBA has found no evidence that LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the salary cap, according to three people with knowledge of recent discussions between the two sides, per ESPN\u2019s Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bx6MbTZKJN\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/bx6MbTZKJN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/YahooSports\/status\/2089393914457334013?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\">August 17, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Basketball Association has found no evidence that Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":516495,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17987,17651,27158],"news_category":[16706],"gn_keywords":[18927,18681,23166],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"The league has no evidence that Leonard was paid via sponsors.","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/516494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/516494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516496,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/516494\/revisions\/516496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516494"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=516494"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=516494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}