Mark Cuban Speaks Out On Kawhi Leonard Endorsement Drama

Right when the NBA news cycle seemed to hit an absolute low, another huge story has broken. Pablo Torre recently reported on his show “Pablo Torre Finds Out” that he believes Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers took part in a controversial endorsement that may have paid Leonard for absolutely nothing. 

This $28 million “no-show” endorsement was from a firm called Aspiration. Aspiration is partly funded by guess who, Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer! They have now gone bankrupt. There is no question that this report seems damning against both Leonard and the Clippers organization. 

For example, as part of the endorsement contract, Leonard would no longer get his payment if he left the Clippers for another team or retired. The contract was also built so that he could collect all the endorsement money without ever doing any promotional work. 

Now, former NBA owner Mark Cuban has chipped in his two cents on the controversial report. 

“I’m on Team Ballmer.  

As much as I wish they circumvented the salary cap,  First Steve isn’t that dumb.  If he did try to feed KL money, knowing what was at stake for him personally and his team, do you think he would let the company go bankrupt? Knowing all creditors would be visible to the world? 

They got scammed by Aspiration, along with many others.  Crimes for which they pleaded guilty last week. 

Scammers do scammy things.  They did a $300m sponsorship deal with the Clippers in 2021.   That’s a HUGE deal.  The better the team does, the more value the sponsorship has. It actually makes perfect sense that if they stole money from investors and want the Clippers to succeed, why not give the stolen money to help keep their best player ?”

Cuban makes it clear that he isn’t buying that Ballmer was involved in this shady deal. Does he really believe that, or is it an unspoken rule to back up your buddies in the billionaire club? He also doesn’t mention what Leonard and his team knew about this deal. 

Regardless of who is fully at fault, this could cause some major drama in the NBA. Will the Clippers or Leonard be reprimanded for this potential circumvention of the salary cap? Only time will tell.