The NBA dropped the hammer on Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer on Wednesday, suspending the former Microsoft CEO from all league and team activities for one year and fining the franchise $30 million following a year-long investigation into illegal salary-cap circumvention involving star forward Kawhi Leonard.
The sweeping sanctions mark one of the most severe punitive actions taken against an owner in modern sports history. Beyond Ballmer’s ban and the team fine, the Clippers were stripped of five consecutive first-round draft picks (2029 through 2033), several team executives were suspended, and Leonard was ordered to pay $700,000 in restitution. Leonard’s uncle and advisor, Dennis Robertson, was also banned from league activity for five years.
The league’s findings center on allegations that first surfaced in late 2025: that Ballmer and team management illegally funneled off-court income to Leonard to bypass the NBA’s strict salary cap limits.
Central to what the NBA identified as a salary-cap evasion scheme was Aspiration, a green-banking tech startup that filed for bankruptcy after its co-founder pleaded guilty to a $248 million fraud. Shortly after signing Leonard to a $176 million contract extension in 2021, Ballmer personally poured $50 million into Aspiration, while the team landed a $300 million sponsorship deal and Leonard secured a multimillion-dollar endorsement contract with the firm.
The NBA’s findings directly refute Ballmer’s aggressive defense. When allegations first surfaced last year, Ballmer strongly rejected the claims, labeling the idea that he used tech investments to pay Leonard under the table as “absurd” and framing the transaction as a standard startup investment gone wrong. However, league investigators concluded that Ballmer knowingly facilitated off-court financial opportunities to secure Leonard’s commitment.
The disciplinary action echoes the aggressive corporate posture that defined Ballmer’s era at Microsoft, where the company repeatedly pushed legal and regulatory boundaries to maintain market dominance. As Microsoft’s president and later CEO during its contentious antitrust battles with the U.S. Department of Justice and European regulators in the late 1990s and 2000s, Ballmer oversaw a corporate culture famous for playing hardball to secure competitive advantages.
The suspension marks a rare personal and organizational blow for Ballmer. He bought the Clippers in 2014 for a then-record $2 billion shortly after stepping down from Microsoft, leveraging his immense tech fortune — currently valued around $150 billion — to transform the franchise, including the opening of its state-of-the-art, tech-laden Intuit Dome.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called the circumvention “flagrant” in a statement, emphasizing that the salary cap system serves as “the bedrock of competitive balance in the NBA.”
Following the ruling, Leonard — whose trade to Toronto had been paused during the probe — said that he accepts “full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle,” adding he is focused on “closing this chapter and moving forward with a clean slate.”
