NBA suspends Clippers owner Ballmer, fines team $30M in cap circumvention case

The Clippers had said multiple times that they had done nothing wrong.

LOS ANGELES -- The NBA imposed a sweeping punishment against the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday for violating salary cap circumvention rules, suspending owner Steve Ballmer for one year and forcing the team to forfeit five draft picks.

Also, two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard was hit with a $700,000 penalty, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank was banned for six months and team president of business operations Gillian Zucker was suspended for one year.

The league came down hard on the organization after a nearly yearlong investigation led by an outside law firm.

The Clippers had said multiple times that they had done nothing wrong and expected to be exonerated.

“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. “What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner (Adam) Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure its fairness and accuracy.”

The Clippers said they 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 league said it and the players' union agreed to confirm the penalties as final and binding on all parties. It said the outside law firm continues to receive information involving the investigation, and the league “will consider further action as appropriate.”

“I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers' institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct,” Silver said in a statement. “The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”

The NBA began investigating in September 2025 whether a $28 million endorsement contract between Leonard and Aspiration Fund Adviser LLC — a company that filed for bankruptcy last year — broke league rules, following a report by journalist Pablo Torre .