Steve Ballmer Fires Back: Clippers Owner Slams Nba Over Kawhi Leonard Endorsement Drama on ONDA LA

Ballmer Steps Up to the Plate in Kawhi Leonard Scandal

Yo, LA fam, the drama in Clipperland just hit a whole new level! Steve Ballmer, the big boss of the Los Angeles Clippers, is throwing punches in his first public comments since the Kawhi Leonard endorsement mess blew up. Speaking to ESPN on Thursday, Ballmer didn’t hold back, calling on the NBA to dig deep into other teams allegedly playing fast and loose with salary cap rules.

“I’m all for the league taking a hard look at this stuff. Salary cap rules keep the game fair, and I want the NBA to investigate every corner of this,” Ballmer said, dropping some serious heat. With the spotlight on him and Leonard over a shady $28 million marketing deal with environmental startup Aspiration, Ballmer’s ready to flip the script and point fingers elsewhere.

This whole saga kicked off when podcaster Pablo Torre spilled the tea on Wednesday, alleging Ballmer and Leonard dodged NBA salary cap limits with a no-show deal. Now, the Inglewood arena vibes at the Intuit Dome are feeling more like a Hollywood thriller than a hoops haven.

Behind the Aspiration Deal: Shady Business or Bad Luck?

Ballmer’s Big Investment and Bigger Regrets

Let’s break it down, SoCal style. Ballmer dropped a cool $50 million into Aspiration, a San Francisco-based company, with plans for advertising gigs and even naming rights for the Clippers’ shiny new Inglewood arena, which opened in 2024. Everything seemed locked and loaded - until it wasn’t.

“We were done with Kawhi, done with Aspiration. The deals were set,” Ballmer told ESPN, sounding like a man who just got played on the Venice Beach boardwalk. “They asked to meet Kawhi, and per the rules, we can hook up sponsors with our players. But we stayed out of it.”

Kawhi’s Connection and the Side Hustle

The plot thickened in November 2021, just two months after the Clippers signed a massive $300 million sponsorship with Aspiration. Kawhi Leonard, the two-time NBA champ, got introduced to the company, and Ballmer swears neither he nor the team had a hand in whatever went down next. “We found the email from early November making the intro. After that, they were off doing their own thing,” he said.

Fast forward, and whispers of a $20 million side deal for Leonard surfaced, per Torre’s Friday report citing the Boston Sports Journal. A former Clippers employee even claimed Ballmer told staff to hush up about Leonard’s deal, hinting it was a sneaky way to “circumvent the salary cap.” Talk about some Malibu-style drama!

Fraud, Con Jobs, and Ballmer’s Embarrassment

Aspiration’s Dirty Laundry

Here’s where it gets straight-up messy. Ballmer says he got totally conned by Aspiration, with his investment netting him less than three percent of the company - just enough to make it look legit to other investors. “No board seat, no control. Heck, it was a fraudulent company. Maybe nobody had control,” he vented to ESPN.

Turns out, Aspiration’s co-founder Joe Sanberg pleaded guilty to wire fraud in August, scamming investors and lenders out of over $248 million, according to the Justice Department. Facing up to 40 years in the slammer, Sanberg’s got bigger problems than a bad Yelp review.

Ballmer Owns Up to Being Duped

Ballmer’s not dodging the shade, admitting he feels “embarrassed” for not sniffing out the scam. “They conned me. I thought this was legit, and they played me. My staff and I looked at fraudulent financials - should I have caught it? Maybe, but I didn’t,” he confessed. “Plenty of other smart investors got duped too.”

“I can’t predict why Aspiration did what they did, especially with Kawhi’s contract. I got played, plain and simple,” Ballmer told ESPN, keeping it real about the betrayal.

This whole mess has left Ballmer shaking his head, wondering how a deal meant to boost the Clippers’ green cred turned into a full-blown scandal. With the Intuit Dome (shoutout to Inglewood, the heart of LA’s new sports scene) hosting games amid this chaos, Clippers fans are just hoping the team’s on-court game stays stronger than this off-court soap opera.