Basketball franchise used four different enterprises to funnel truckloads of money to star forward Kawhi Leonard beyond his publicised salary

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. Once upon a time there was a team that shared its home city with a far more successful and globally renowned rival. So, the less-vaunted club decided to bend the rules just a tad. In a league where regulations about the salary cap were supposedly strictly enforced, this unscrupulous outfit opted to cook their books and gain an illegal advantage.

Among the subterfuges deployed was an elaborate scheme ensuring their best player earned many multiples of his official wage through no-show contracts with outside companies that just so happened to have ties to the club owner. Imagine such a thing.

Like their counterparts over in the soon to be very blue half of Manchester, the Los Angeles Clippers’ use of shadow deals to circumvent NBA spending rules and to try to outshine their more illustrious neighbours, the Lakers, was eventually rumbled.

Beyond trousering $50m per season, it turned out their star forward Kawhi Leonard also took home $7m each year from Aspiration, an eco-conscious financial services firm in which the Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer was heavily invested. Handy money for an endorsement deal that didn’t require him to do any actual endorsing.

He enjoyed a similarly lucrative sinecure with Daktronics, a company that had been paid what many regarded as an exorbitant $100m by Ballmer to build the video screen at the team’s Intuit Dome. Leonard received another $18m through pay for no play arrangements with at least two other businesses, plus a free equity stake in a minor league soccer club in Rhode Island. Oh, and in another violation of league policy, the Clippers also covered all air and ground travel expenses for him and his uncle/adviser, Dennis Robertson.

This extensive chicanery was first exposed by Pablo Torre Finds Out, the eponymous investigative podcast run by a former ESPN journalist. Initially, the Clippers denied everything but then the NBA hired the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz to independently probe the allegations. After 12 months and a legal bill of $50m, the third-party examination of their business practices concluded Torre’s forensic reporting had been correct, and the club was penalised accordingly.

For using four different enterprises to funnel truckloads of money to Leonard beyond his publicised salary, the club has been forced to forfeit five first-round draft picks, fined $30m, and had several key personnel, including the owner, suspended from all team and league activities for between six months and a year. The loss of draft picks will make it almost impossible for the Clippers, currently a young squad of up and comers, to compete for an NBA title for much of the next decade. Perhaps more significantly, the Department of Justice has just begun a criminal inquiry into the shadier corners of their business operation.

Fans of the Premier League and its glacial disciplinary process can only wonder how a governing body could only need one calendar year to sift through such serious accusations, come up with a verdict and hand out a penalty. It’s almost as if time should be of the essence when it comes to trying to preserve the integrity of a sport. Having reacted to news of their impending punishment, by loudly threatening to launch appeals in the hope of creating some sort of elongated sporting version of Jarndyce and Jarndyce – otherwise known as the Manchester City gambit – the Clippers took only a couple of weeks to eventually come to their senses and to meekly agree to take their medicine.

The whole tawdry affair started when Leonard became a free agent in 2019. Fresh off leading the Toronto Raptors to a championship, he had several high-profile suitors, including the Lakers, chasing his signature. Mere months after he ultimately opted to sign for the Clippers, not the most glamorous destination available, there were media reports that his negotiations with various clubs had involved his Uncle Dennis making outrageous contractual demands on his behalf. These included wanting a free house, use of a private plane 24/7, part-ownership of the team, and guaranteed income streams outside his regular salary.

Having investigated those allegations, the NBA somehow found no evidence of any wrongdoing, a conclusion that speaks volumes about their own inadequacies. Six years down the line, Torre blew the story of the relationship between player and club open with enough force to win a Pulitzer Prize. His work also got Uncle Dennis banned from engaging with any basketball player or team for five years. While the league congratulated itself for meting out the toughest penalty in the history of the sport and many around the game regarded it as a “sledgehammer” judgment, plenty reckon it could and should have been a lot worse.

With mandatory relegation not an option and having won no titles that could be stripped away, the fine is especially nonsensical. Ballmer is worth an estimated $145bn. Demanding he pay $30m in restitution is the equivalent of asking somebody earning $100k a year to fork over 20 cents. Even if he is also required to foot the $50m bill for the investigation, this causes him far less pain than the ominous news the relentless Torre is continuing to dig into the Clippers’ affairs.

For his part in this debacle, Leonard was fined $700,000 and has since been traded back to the Toronto Raptors where he will earn $57m per season. The show must go on.