INGLEWOOD, Calif. \u2014 The NBA has handed down significant penalties to Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer following an internal investigation into a controversial endorsement deal involving star player Kawhi Leonard. The league announced that Ballmer will be suspended for one year, the Clippers will forfeit five future draft picks, and the franchise must pay a $30 million fine.<\/p>\n
The sanctions stem from a $28 million agreement initially revealed last September. At the time, Ballmer told ESPN that the organization was not involved in what appeared to be a shady arrangement wherein Leonard received payment for endorsing a Jumbotron display without actually performing any promotional duties.<\/p>\n
However, a 35-page report commissioned by the NBA and conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has since concluded that Ballmer’s assertions were incorrect. The report stated that Ballmer’s claims regarding the deal were “inaccurate (at best)” and described the statements made by Clippers president Larry Miller as “clearly false.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer faces a one-year NBA suspension, $30M fine, and loss of five draft picks after an investigation found his claims about a corrupt endorsement deal were false.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[144,688,687,686,689,685,116],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-gadgets","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-nba","tag-sports-business","tag-steve-ballmer","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}