The NBA announced Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, that it is stripping the Los Angeles Clippers of five first-round draft picks, fining the franchise $30 million, and suspending owner Steve Ballmer from all league and team activities for one year after an independent investigation found salary-cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard.

The league said the determination was based on an investigation by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. In an official statement, the NBA said the inquiry “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules.” ESPN’s Shams Charania was first to report the penalties; the league then published the full list.

The Clippers will forfeit a first-round pick in each of the 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033 NBA Drafts. President of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year. President of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months. The organization and its personnel are under a league-run compliance and monitoring program for five years.

Leonard was not suspended, and the league did not void his contract, Sportsnet and USA Today’s For The Win reported. He is required to pay the NBA $700,000. His uncle and former business manager, Dennis Robertson, is banned for five years from conducting business with NBA teams and their affiliates on behalf of any player or league or team personnel, the NBA said.

What the league says it found

According to the NBA, the Clippers broke salary-cap circumvention rules in the collective bargaining agreement by initiating off-court income opportunities between Leonard and four companies doing business with the team — Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance — facilitating endorsement agreements with those companies, inducing them to enter the deals by offering them team business, paying personal expenses for Leonard and his representatives, and failing to report improper solicitations made on Leonard’s behalf through Robertson.

The league said Leonard, through Robertson’s conduct on his behalf, violated the same rules by pressuring the Clippers to help him obtain those opportunities, obtaining them, and failing to reimburse the team for personal expenses.

Ballmer was suspended, the NBA said, for “knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities, for approving a business deal that he knew was a precondition for Aspiration to enter into an endorsement agreement with Mr. Leonard, and for his failure to create conditions under which his organization abided by the NBA’s circumvention rules.” Zucker, the league said, was “primarily and directly culpable for the impermissible endorsement arrangements” and for “providing false and misleading statements to investigators.” Frank was cited for involvement in those arrangements and for “approving impermissible expenses incurred by Mr. Leonard and his family.”

Commissioner Adam Silver said: “The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans. I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”

The NBA said it and the National Basketball Players Association have an agreement confirming the penalties “are final and binding on all parties.” Wachtell Lipton “continues to receive information relevant to the investigation, and the league will consider further action as appropriate,” the statement added. ESPN, filling in the “prior offender” line, noted the Clippers were fined $250,000 in 2015 for violating rules against offering unauthorized business or investment opportunities to players while pursuing free agent DeAndre Jordan.

Clippers reject the findings; Leonard accepts inner-circle lapses

The Clippers “vehemently reject” the conclusions and said they will fight them. “We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence,” the team said in a statement carried by ESPN and Sportsnet. “What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure [its] fairness and accuracy.”

“For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence. We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process,” the Clippers said.

ESPN reported that team attorney David N. Kelley also sent a letter to Silver calling the investigation and findings unfair, saying Ballmer’s reputation has been “irreparably damaged,” and likening the process to a “witch hunt.”

That is the process fight in one frame: a closed league wrote the cap, hired the investigators, announced the sentence, and told the union the result is final — while the club that got hit wants an arbitrator who does not work for the office that just punished it. Whether an arbitrator rewrites any of this is the next question, not Wednesday’s announcement.

Leonard, through his agent Harrison Gaines, accepted “full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle” and said he entered his Clippers contract and the agreements in question in good faith, “with no knowledge of any intent on anyone’s part to circumvent the salary cap.” He added: “As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate.”

The Raptors trade, and how this started

The Clippers and Toronto Raptors agreed this summer on a trade centered on Leonard — Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two unprotected first-round picks, a 2027 pick swap, and two second-round selections going to Los Angeles — then put it on hold in July pending the investigation. Charania reported Wednesday there is “full expectation” the deal will now be completed. Leonard’s statement assumed a return to Toronto. The announced penalties do not include a player suspension or a voided contract, which had been the risk that froze the trade.

The league opened the inquiry in September 2025 after reporting by journalist Pablo Torre on a $28 million endorsement arrangement between Leonard and Aspiration, a company that later filed for bankruptcy. Wednesday’s NBA findings went beyond Aspiration to Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton as well. Daktronics is one of the four companies named in the league’s findings; separately on Wednesday, the manufacturer told investors the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information concerning the company and Leonard — a federal information request, not the NBA penalty itself, as reported earlier.

Dated Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026: the league published the sentence. The Clippers say they will take it to arbitration.

Sources