NBA Repeats Its 2000 Five-Pick Penalty on the Clippers

The NBA stripped the Los Angeles Clippers of five first-round picks and fined the club $30 million on Sept. 2, 2026, for salary cap circumvention tied to Kawhi Leonard. Owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year, and Leonard must pay the league $700,000, with no suspension and no voided contract.

Those five picks, taken in 2029 through 2033, match the draft penalty David Stern issued to the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000. Minnesota also lost the player. Leonard can still be traded to Toronto.

What the Wachtell Report Says the Clippers Did

The league hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz after journalist Pablo Torre published, on Sept. 3, 2025, documents describing a hidden Aspiration endorsement. The probe widened to three more companies that already did business with the club: Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance.

Investigators conducted 73 interviews of 60 people, including Ballmer, Leonard, Dennis Robertson, Gillian Zucker, and Lawrence Frank, and reviewed more than 200,000 pages from the team, Ballmer’s office, Aspiration, and other firms. Zucker is president of business operations. Frank is president of basketball operations. Robertson is Leonard’s uncle and former business manager, fired by the player in June.

The NBA said the Clippers, “a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules,” had been investigated before specifically with respect to Leonard. That history is why the report calls Ballmer’s failure to set rules inside his own building an especially serious lapse.

HOW THE CLIPPERS BROKE THE RULES

• The introductions: The club initiated off-court income between Leonard and Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance.
• The contracts: Team officials helped those companies finish endorsement deals with him.
• The inducement: The Clippers offered the four firms business from the team if the player deals moved.
• The expenses: The club paid personal costs for Leonard and his representatives that league rules do not allow.
• The silence: Officials did not report improper asks made on Leonard’s behalf by Robertson.

Leonard, through Robertson, pressured the Clippers for off-court pay, got those deals, and did not repay personal expenses the team covered. The NBA ordered the club to forfeit five first-round draft picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033, and placed the organization under a five-year compliance program run by the league office.

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association signed an agreement that these penalties are final and binding on every party. Wachtell is still taking in new material, and the league said it will consider further action as appropriate.

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Minnesota Lost Five Picks and Then Got Two Back

On Oct. 25, 2000, Stern directed the forfeiture of Minnesota’s own first-rounders in 2001 through 2005, fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, and voided the player contract between Smith and the club, along with earlier Smith deals. Joe Smith, the 1995 No. 1 pick then playing in Minnesota, had been promised a secret package worth $86 million over seven years in exchange for taking short, below-market contracts so the team could gain his Bird rights.

THE 2000 TIMBERWOLVES AND THE 2026 CLIPPERS

Minnesota did not keep all five empty drafts. After Taylor accepted a suspension and McHale took an unpaid leave, the league gave back the 2003 pick in December 2000. On Dec. 28, 2001, Stern restored the Timberwolves 2005 first-round pick as well. The net loss was 2001, 2002, and 2004. Smith signed with Detroit as a free agent.

The Clippers copied the original pick count, not the restored version. They also kept the player the 2000 case put on the market. That fork, more than the size of the check, is what separates the two sentences.

Aspiration’s $48 Million Deal Came With Three Others

Public talk of this case began with Aspiration, the now-bankrupt sustainability firm that had a team sponsorship and money from Ballmer. The investigators’ record is wider than that one contract. Zucker emailed Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton in June 2020 to connect them with Robertson. Within a month Leonard had signed multi-year deals with two of those companies on the same day, and he had the third by the end of August. By early September 2020, money was already moving under each of those three agreements.

THE FOUR ENDORSEMENT ARRANGEMENTS

A senior Clippers official told Daktronics the exact terms the club wanted for Leonard: $3 million a year for two years, while the vendor was chasing the videoboard work at the team’s new arena. Two of the three 2020 companies received $10 million from the Clippers before they signed Leonard. The third received $2 million after it had already paid him once.

Ballmer personally approved a Forum business deal he knew was a precondition for Aspiration to finish its endorsement with Leonard. Investigators also found hundreds of instances in which the Clippers paid for personal air and ground travel, rooms, gifts, and tickets for Leonard, his family, and Robertson without taking those sums out of Leonard’s pay, as the collective bargaining agreement requires. The total on those expenses was a fraction of the endorsement money and still large enough to count as a separate violation.

Zucker, the report says, is primarily and directly culpable for the endorsement arrangements and gave investigators false and misleading statements. Frank discussed his own conduct, took responsibility for subordinates, and was judged more consistent across interviews. He still signed off on expenses for Leonard and his family that the rules do not allow. Robertson is banned for five years from doing business with NBA teams and their affiliates on behalf of any player or staffer.

Why the Stripped Picks Start in 2029

The league did not take 2027 or 2028 because those drafts were already tangled in older trades. Philadelphia still has a claim on Clippers first-round value from the James Harden deal. Oklahoma City’s 2027 swap rights with Los Angeles were left untouched. The punishment begins in the first stretch of drafts the club still controlled in a clean way.

That timing is why a $30 million fine reads louder than it spends. Ballmer can write the check without changing how the roster is built. Five empty first-round trays from 2029 through 2033 change the trade board for a franchise that had just started collecting future picks again after the Kawhi-and-Paul-George years.

A pending trade with Toronto would send Los Angeles two unprotected Raptors first-rounders in 2031 and 2033, plus a 2027 swap and two second-rounders. If that deal closes, two of the five vacant Clippers drafts would be partly backfilled with Toronto’s own picks, which is a very different sentence from Minnesota sitting out 2001 and 2002 with nothing incoming. The 2029, 2030, and 2032 firsts would still be gone.

Kawhi Leonard Walks to Toronto With His Contract Intact

Leonard averaged 27.9 points in 65 games for the Clippers in 2025-26, the highest scoring season of his career, and the club agreed on June 30 to send him back to the Raptors. Toronto paused the trade on July 9 after the league warned that any buyer would assume the risk of whatever the probe did to Leonard’s contract. The ruling removed that risk. There is no void and no suspension, so the paper can be signed.

FROM THE 2019 SIGNING TO THE SEPT. 2 RULING

1. July 2019: Leonard leaves Toronto for a three-year, $103 million deal with the Clippers after Robertson had asked rival clubs for off-court guarantees, a house, a plane, and even a slice of ownership.
2. June to August 2020: Zucker introduces Robertson to Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton; Leonard signs the three deals and is paid under all of them by early September.
3. August 2021: Leonard re-signs for four years and $176.3 million, the maximum then allowed, and the last of the $18 million from those three companies is in.
4. April 2022: Aspiration’s four-year endorsement with Leonard’s KL2 Aspire LLC is executed, with pay tied to him remaining a Clipper.
5. Sept. 3, 2025: Torre’s podcast airs the Aspiration documents; the NBA hires Wachtell within days.
6. June 30, 2026: The Clippers and Raptors agree on a trade sending Leonard to Toronto for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two unprotected first-round picks, a 2027 swap, and two second-round picks.
7. July 9, 2026: Toronto freezes the deal until the probe ends.
8. Sept. 2, 2026: The NBA issues the penalties and leaves the contract intact.

Minnesota’s 2000 case put Smith on the open market. This one leaves Leonard as a finished trade chip. The Raptors still want him. The Clippers still want Ingram, Dick, and those Toronto firsts. The year of waiting was about whether that contract would survive. It did.

The Clippers Reject a Penalty the Union Already Signed

Commissioner Adam Silver tied the size of the penalty to what he called flagrant violations and a failure of leadership inside the franchise.

The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans. 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, 2026 announcement

Hours later the Clippers rejected the findings in full and promised to fight them.

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. What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure its fairness and accuracy. For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence. We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process.

Los Angeles Clippers, written statement, Sept. 2, 2026

David N. Kelley of O’Melveny & Myers, writing to Silver for the club, called the probe a witch hunt and a gross injustice and said Ballmer’s reputation had been irreparably damaged. The letter argued that no league rule bars a team from introducing a player to a sponsor, and that a $50 million investigation of any franchise would turn up similar intros. Wachtell’s own file describes Clippers counsel as slow and adversarial, and it records that Zucker’s interviews did not match the documents.

Minnesota eventually traded time away from Taylor and McHale for two of its five picks. The Clippers are trying that door while the union has already signed the penalties as final. Zucker is out a year without pay, including for false statements to investigators. Frank is out six months without pay. Ballmer is barred from league and team work for a year. Leonard owes $700,000 and can report to Toronto if the June 30 trade is finished. The five first-round trays for 2029 through 2033 are empty unless an arbitrator, or a later commissioner, puts something back.