The Clippers are now dealing with two separate reckonings at once.
One is complete: the NBA has finished its nearly yearlong investigation into the team and Kawhi Leonard, found “multiple significant rules violations,” and handed down the harshest punishment it can for salary-cap circumvention. The other is only beginning: the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the Clippers’ efforts to secure “no-show” endorsement deals for Leonard.
That split screen leaves the franchise in a rare position. The league has already ruled. Federal authorities have not.
The NBA’s penalties are sweeping. The Clippers were fined $30 million, owner Steve Ballmer was suspended from anything to do with the team or the league for one year, and team president of business operations Gillian Zucker and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank were also suspended. Zucker’s suspension is one year without pay; Frank’s is six months without pay.
Leonard was fined $700,000, but he will not be suspended. His contract and Bird rights remain intact.
The league also stripped the Clippers of five first-round picks: 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033. That matters immediately and for years to come. The Clippers already have no access to first-round capital to use in a trade, and the loss of those picks removes even more flexibility from a roster that has to operate without them.
The NBA said the penalties were tied to salary-cap circumvention when the team signed Leonard to an extension in 2021. It also imposed the maximum allowed fine for cap circumvention on the four companies involved in the scheme, $7.5 million each, for a total of $30 million.
The Clippers, for their part, said they “intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to them.” They have denied any wrongdoing and released a statement after the league’s findings.
The federal inquiry adds a different kind of uncertainty. According to the reporting, the Justice Department’s criminal investigation is in its earliest stages, and it is still unclear what, if any, federal charges could come out of it. That means the NBA’s discipline may be the end of one process, but not the end of the story.
There is also a familiar history here. In 2015, the Clippers were fined $250,000 for a similar accusation involving DeAndre Jordan. This time, the punishment is on a far larger scale, and it arrives with the added weight of a federal investigation running alongside it.
The league’s ruling is final and enforceable. The federal case is not.