Clipping Through the Money

The Clippers are a basketball team known for never winning a championship. They’ve won three  division titles and have had several Hall of Famers play for them and yet they’ve never even won a conference title. They aren’t known as one of the most prestigious teams, but they wanted to change that. They wanted to pay one man a lot of money under the table and paid a heavy price.

     A basic rundown of how all this came about. In the National Basketball Association, team owners can draft players, but in order to draft players, they have to give them money. However, there is a limit to the amount of money the owners are allowed to give the players. In 2021, typically if an owner were to give a player funds above $112.4 million there would be penalties inflicted upon them. This is a way to prevent the sport from becoming entirely pay-to-win and make sure that everyone is just about on the same playing field. The NBA enforces this rule by making sure no payments happen under the table, meaning no illegal business. So, sometimes you have to get a little creative.

     Steve Ballmer was the owner of the Clippers and has been for 12 years now, since 2014, and he really wanted to win. Crucial to his plan, apparently, was the player Kawhi Leonard, a popular player who has been a clincher in winning several games and is an overall good and popular player. So, in order to get Leonard on his team, Ballmer decided to try and pay him a little extra. 

     The mechanism by which Ballmer gave Leonard money was complicated, but to simplify it, in order to bypass the NBA’s rules, Ballmer invested in several companies. Those companies would then transfer millions of dollars to Kawhi Leonard, all under the nose of the Association. At least, that was how it was meant to go. However, the paper trail left behind turned out to be a little too obvious. Because the companies were transferring the money to Leonard without him even having to say a word, it was highly suspicious. Why would companies transfer him money for no reason?

     This was the thought of Pablo Torre, an independent investigative journalist who was the leader of these examinations. During his investigations, he published a series of videos online relaying his findings, making it clearly and easily accessible to the public, drawing more eyes on Ballmer. Torre’s videos got a combined 79,378 views and the story was picked up by outlets such as The New York Times,Yahoo Sports and even universities like Harvard Law. On Sep 3, 2025, the NBA launched an official investigation based on Torre’s claims.

     On the opposite side of Torre was ESPN, who bought everything that Steve Ballmer said. They had an interview with him where he defended himself and ESPN asked him softball questions such as, “You guys said that these allegations are provably false. So how do you prove that?” and “Have you spoken to Kawhi about any of these allegations since the podcast came out on Wednesday?” and “Would you be interested to see what he has to say?” (Steve Ballmer denies report that Clippers circumvented NBA’s salary cap). They downplayed Torre, calling him a podcaster in their discussions, as they defended Ballmer and eventually blamed everything on Leonard, and later even declared that the NBA hadn’t found any evidence of Ballmer’s wrongdoing on Aug 17, 2026. At every turn, ESPN was on Ballmer’s side. Why? Because the League pays their bills and Ballmer is the wealthiest owner. If they go after Ballmer, who’s to say the League will keep their access to the games? They needed to kiss the feet of the League, lest they be kicked off their throne.

     In the end, Ballmer’s misdeeds came to light. The Clippers’ skullduggery lost them 5 first-round draft picks, gave them a $30 million fine, and got Ballmer himself banned from all League activities for a year. Torre and his team received a Pulitzer Prize–a prestigious award given for excellence in journalism, literature, or drama–for their efforts, rewarding their hard work. ESPN was proven wrong in their reporting and faced heavy criticism from the public and the League alike. It is not very often that villains lose in real life, but this seems to be one of those few cases.