Last week, Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out sent headlines buzzing in the NBA when he published a story that Kawhi Leonard has an apparent “no-show” gig with a disgraced company that once had a sponsorship deal with the Los Angeles Clippers.
The insinuations from Torre are blatant allegations: Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer orchestrated a deal to funnel at least $28 million to Leonard to circumvent the NBA salary cap.
But new reporting is making big holes in Torre’s reporting. According to two ESPN reporters, whose source is the NBA league office, Dennis Robertson, working as a de facto representative for Leonard, requested perks for Kawhi from the Toronto Raptors in 2019 that are similar to what he allegedly got from Aspiration later after he signed a contract with the Clippers.
One of Robertson’s requests from the ownership group of the Raptors back in 2019 was to be introduced to team sponsors for the purposes of grabbing separate deals for Leonard. According to reporting, Robertson explained his nephew wanted a sponsor to pay him but “we [meaning Kawhi] don’t want to do anything” for the money.
Robertson, known as “Uncle Dennis,” has thrust himself front and center into many incidents with his nephew Leonard. Last week, in an appearance on Pablo Torre Finds Out, a podcast presented by Meadowlark Media, Mark Cuban asserted that he felt Robertson was the person behind this latest controversy.
“Uncle Dennis is the smart one in all of this,” Cuban told Torre, implying that Robertson sought a lucrative no-show gig with Aspiration for his nephew.
Timeline of the Leonard/Ballmer/Aspiration story
The controversy that erupted from Torre’s reporting is not easy to follow, but the details now all seem to be clear:
- Leonard secured a free agent contract to re-sign with the Clippers in August of 2021.
- In September of 2021, Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration, a company that claimed it offered carbon credits to offset consumers’ footprints by arranging for the planting of trees.
- That same month in 2021, Aspiration inked a $300 million deal to be the first-ever arena sponsor of the Intuit Dome, home to the Clippers.
- In April of 2022, a deal between Leonard and Aspiration took effect: the company would pay the NBA forward $28 million over four years. He would be asked to promote the brand, but according to Torre, Leonard never performed any services for Aspiration. The company also agreed to reward Leonard with $20 million in Aspiration stock.
- In March of 2025, Aspiration co-founder and CEO Joe Sanberg was arrested on alleged fraud charges. Aspiration filed for bankruptcy. Sanberg pled guilty to a lesser charge in August.
- Prior to the bankruptcy filing and charges against the CEO, employees were instructed to pay Leonard’s annual $7 million and “make it a priority,” according to Torre’s sources.
Predictably there is a furor in many corners of the sports world since Torre went public with his reporting. Many armchair journalists and talking heads in the podcast world have convicted Leonard and Ballmer in the court of public opinion.
But given the recent news from ESPN and the NBA sources, it may seem that Leonard’s uncle has been seeking a “sweetener” from any team willing to listen whenever his nephew has had an opportunity to extract money as a free agent.
Cuban said that he didn’t believe that Ballmer thought of Aspiration, “these guys are scammers, and I know they’re scammers, so maybe they’ll do a scam for me.”
So far, no evidence has been presented that illustrates that the Clippers or Ballmer were aware of or sanctioned a deal between Aspiration and Leonard for purposes of avoiding the salary cap. Torre and others are insinuating that the $48 million in potential earnings for Leonard from Aspiration nearly matches the $50 million that Ballmer invested in the company. So far coincidence hasn’t been accompanied by a smoking gun.
It appears far more likely that Robertson, perhaps instructed by Leonard or on his own, schemed a plan to get millions from Aspiration, a company that was shilling out millions to celebrities in return for brand marketing services. Such a deal is not illegal, nor does it violate the NBA salary cap. It may look bad for Leonard, but it also may have lined Robertson’s pockets.
Robertson was investigated by the NBA in 2019 for possible violations of league rules while negotiating deals as a representative of Kawhi Leonard. That led to the NBA changing some of its rules in regards to how a relative could represent an NBA player, and what a designated representative could negotiate.
Torre rests almost everything he is alleging on seven former employees of Aspiration he says told him that the Leonard payments were “priority number one.” He hasn’t shown a paper trail at all which indicates Ballmer ever conceived of, schemed, or approved a salary cap avoidance deal via Aspiration.
In the end, Ballmer made a $50 million investment in a company that he likely believed in, and knew was poised to become a large sponsor of the team he controls. Aspiration’s founder turned out to be criminally negligent. The company (and the sponsorship deal) are no more.
Lost in the furor from many who have sided with Torre’s reporting and allegations is the inconvenient (for them) fact that Leonard’s contract with the Clippers was not a sweetheart deal for the team. The cost of the deal was not much below market value, if at all. The cap hit was in line with high-priced superstars. Leonard did not leave any money on the table when he inked his contract with the Clippers.
The question now is: did Leonard take any money under the table? So far, not one piece of evidence shows that the Clippers manipulated the salary cap by orchestrating a deal on the side.
In today’s world where the “mic makes right,” it’s difficult to persuade most people to be measured, to read the details, to use reason when understanding a story. That’s why it’s very easy to get lots of people in and around the NBA to scream “foul” at Ballmer and Leonard.
But until someone produces evidence that something happened that was against league rules, this “scandal” is really just a “nothing burger.”
For Torre, who produces some excellent journalistic content, this story, if it falls apart, could be the first step on his journey to becoming the new Geraldo Rivera.
