Ballmer Reportedly Donated $1.875M to Aspiration Exec's Charity After Being 'Conned'

New revelations continue to surface as the NBA probes allegations of salary-cap circumvention by the Los Angeles Clippers and star Kawhi Leonard.

Pablo Torre dropped another episode of his Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast on Monday and reported that Clippers team governor Steve Ballmer donated almost $1.9 million to Aspiration, the environmental company at the center of the allegations.

This was after the Clippers ended a sponsorship agreement with Aspiration and when the company was already under federal investigation.

"Am I taking crazy pills? It's just inconceivable to me to be both hoodwinked and bamboozled yet continuously giving money to [Aspiration co-founder] Joe Sanberg," one former Aspiration employee told Torre "… It does not make any iota of sense to invest in 2021, contribute nearly $100 million in carbon offset pre-purchases, reinvest in 2022-2023 round, claim all of that to be lost in 2023, and then come back for more in 2024 via charitable donation."

Dallas Mavericks minority stakeholder Mark Cuban once again came to Ballmer's defense and pushed back on Torre's reporting.

"All of what you said is MEANINGLESS if KL2 didn't actually get paid," he posted on social media. "You once again talk about the first 2 payments. But NEVER, not once, not even a discussion of ANY PAYMENTS BEYOND THE FIRST 2.

"Why? You have your sources IN THE FINANCE DEPT. You have the CLO giving you documents. Why haven't you just listed all the payments and dates? Because if all the things Ballmer did were purely to get KL2 paid , shouldn't it matter that he actually DID GET PAID?"

The NBA is looking into whether the Clippers arranged for Leonard to receive a $28 million endorsement contract from Aspiration in 2022, a year after he signed a $176.3 million max extension.

The Clippers denied any wrongdoing and said Ballmer was among the victims of Aspiration's wider fraud.

"These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. They conned me," Ballmer told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne. "I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up, and they conned me at this stage. I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi."

Ballmer said the team facilitated a meeting between Leonard and Aspiration, which is allowed under NBA rules, and didn't go any further than that. According to Torre, the Clippers may have had more direct involvement in the venture.

Torre obtained screenshots of messages in November 2022 that are purportedly between Leonard's agent, Mitch Frankel, and an Aspiration executive. In the correspondence, Frankel was seeking an overdue payment worth $1.75 million owed to the six-time All-Star.

Per Torre, bank statements showed Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong sending a $1.99 million wire transfer to Aspiration in December 2022. A little over a week later, Leonard collected his $1.75 million.

"The world in Clipperland revolves around Kawhi Leonard. And the moon is Dennis Robertson," one former Clippers official said to Torre. "There's no way the Clippers didn't know about this deal."

Robertson, known colloquially as "Uncle Dennis," is an advisor to Leonard and has negotiated on his nephew's behalf.

Torre also reported that Leonard's endorsement contract was a point of contention internally at Aspiration. One company executive called it "a huge expense with no clear ROI."

Last week, The Athletic's Joe Vardon compared Leonard's sponsorship to how other stars around the NBA were compensated off the court and what services they had to provide. The close connection between the Clippers and Aspiration stood out.

"The Athletic could not find another financial relationship between an NBA team and one of its chief sponsors similar to the one between the Clippers and Aspiration in which team ownership contributed millions of dollars to the sponsor's coffers," Vardon wrote.

One agent also described Leonard's payout as "an outlandish number."

"Typically those deals are for somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, depending on the size of the company, the market, etc.. And you can almost always see their work," they said.

If the NBA determines the Clippers violated any league rules with Leonard, the penalties could be severe. The league could move to void Leonard's contract altogether to strip Los Angeles of draft picks.