It’s the biggest hammer the NBA has ever dropped. The LA Clippers have just been walloped with a $30 million fine and stripped of five first-round picks after being caught funnelling millions to Kawhi Leonard off the books.

As first reported by cbinews.tv, the scandal has blown up into one of the most serious salary-cap cases the league has seen in 25 years.

So, what actually happened?

According to the NBA’s report, Leonard pressured the Clippers into “obtaining off-court income opportunities successfully obtaining those opportunities” – basically finding a backdoor way to pay their star man outside the strict salary rules.

It all started to unravel in September 2025, when podcast journalist Pablo Torre flagged a dodgy-looking $28m (£20.8m) endorsement deal between Leonard and a now-bankrupt green finance firm, Aspiration Fund Adviser LLC. The league smelled a rat and opened a formal investigation.

Fast forward to now, and commissioner Adam Silver says he is “deeply disappointed” by what they found, calling it a “flagrant violation” of the rules. And the punishment? It’s brutal.

Here’s the breakdown:

* For the team: A $30m (£22.3m) fine – comfortably the largest team fine in NBA history. The previous record was $3.5m slapped on the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000. They also have to forfeit five first-round draft picks between 2029 and 2033.

* For the owner: Billionaire Steve Ballmer has been suspended from all league and team activities for 12 months.

* For the player: Two-time NBA champion and two-time Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard has been fined $700,000 (£520,000) himself.

* For the front office: Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker has been suspended for a year without pay for providing “misleading statements to investigators”.

The league said its month-long probe “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organisation, a prior offender of the salary-cap circumvention rules.”

Why this feels so familiar – a bit of history

If you’ve followed the NBA for a while, this will give you serious déjà vu.

The last time the league came down this hard was the infamous Joe Smith saga in 2000. The Timberwolves were caught making a secret under-the-table promise to forward Joe Smith for $86m over seven years, while signing him to three tiny one-year deals to cheat the cap. The result? A $3.5m fine, owner Glen Taylor suspended, GM Kevin McHale forced to take leave, and – you guessed it – five first-round picks stripped.

Sound familiar? The Clippers’ penalty mirrors that one almost exactly, just with an extra zero on the fine. It tells you how seriously Silver is taking this.

What are they saying?

Leonard, 35, who joined the Clippers back in 2019 and has just left the franchise after seven years, posted on Instagram:

“I accept full responsibility for my actions and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family. I entered into my contract with the Clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone's part to circumvent the salary cap.”

The Clippers, meanwhile, are not having it. They’ve called it a “witch hunt” and say they’ll appeal “through every avenue available.”

In a fiery statement, the team said: “We vehemently reject the NBA's findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.”

Ballmer’s attorney David Kelley went even further, calling the punishments a “gross injustice” and claiming his client’s reputation has been “irreparably damaged” as he’s now tangled up in the Aspiration bankruptcy proceedings and civil litigation as well.

For the next five years, the entire Clippers organisation will be placed under a compliance and monitoring programme overseen by the league. And Leonard? He’s now expected to finally complete his much-talked-about return to the Toronto Raptors – a move that had been on hold while this investigation played out.

This is far from over.

Source: cbinews.tv

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