NBA Insider Reveals Another Potentially Shady Endorsement Deal For an NBA Free Agent

The NBA has gone 0 days without any drama. The newest piece of news that has been fueling conversations about the league is a report about Kawhi Leonard and a potentially shady endorsement deal he took when he joined the Clippers. 

Essentially, the start-up that Kawhi got paid $28 million by to do essentially nothing was partially funded by the Los Angeles Clippers owner. The NBA is now investigating the situation as it looks like there may have been some salary cap circumvention going on. 

The Ringer’s Howard Beck recentlywrote on skirting the cap rules and mentioned that things like this happen all the time in the NBA. Just nothing on the scale of this Leonard deal. 

“A team might ask a player’s agent to exercise an early-termination option—or forgo the opt-out—with verbal promises of a future payday. A player might get access to the owner’s private jet or get a free car from a local dealership that does business with the franchise. 

Here’s how it worked in one recent instance, as relayed by a team source: A team needed to come up with an extra $150,000 to persuade a free agent to sign. So the GM arranged a $150,000 deal between the player and a local business, requiring the player to make a certain number of promotional appearances. (The team got the player.)

So yes, if a team needs a sweetener to convince a star player to sign, it can usually create one. Just nothing that even remotely resembles the scale of Leonard’s deal.”

It seems like teams are doing this on a small scale. However, Kawhi’s endorsement deal is financially in a totally different category. So did the Clippers pull off an epic yet shady deal and get caught? Or does this happen all the time, and the NBA just turns a blind eye? The results of the current NBA investigation on Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers will tell us a lot.