Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “The Clippers Pay For Kawhi And His Uncle’s Greed”

NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar delivered a scathing assessment of the Los Angeles Clippers ' salary cap circumvention scandal , arguing that the franchise is ultimately paying the price for Kawhi Leonard and his uncle Dennis Robertson's actions.

Writing on his Substack, Kareem began with the importance of competitive fairness and explained that the salary cap only works if every franchise operates under the same rules and restrictions.

"Rules only work if they're the same for everyone. That's a fundamental principle in any sport. Take basketball: if one team gets two points for a layup and the other team gets three, it's pretty clear which team has the advantage. If one team has five players on the court and the other team has four, I know who I'm betting on. The salary cap works the same way. If I can pay my best player $50 million a year and you can only pay yours $40 million, chances are that the better player is going to want to play for me."

"That's the rule the Clippers and their owner Steve Ballmer were accused of violating with their star player Kawhi Leonard, and based on the investigation and report by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, it seems pretty clear that they were guilty as charged."

"This story has been hovering over the NBA for the past year, ever since the podcaster Pablo Torre reported that Leonard had signed a four-year, $28-million endorsement agreement with Aspiration Partners, an environmental startup that Ballmer had invested $50 million into just weeks earlier. According to Torre, Leonard did essentially nothing in return: no advertisements, no public appearances, no evidence he ever promoted the company in any way."

"A clause in the contract said it would be voided if Leonard ever left the team, making it seem all the more like part of his Clippers deal. Aspiration has since gone bankrupt and its founder has gone to jail for fraud, which probably explains why former employees were willing to talk to Torre and later the NBA's investigators. One former Aspiration executive told Torre point blank that Leonard's deal with the company was a way "to circumvent the salary cap."

"The big question, from the League's perspective, is: Who are the cheaters here? The Clippers, Ballmer, and his executives? Leonard? Leonard's uncle, Dennis Robertson, who negotiated his nephew's deals with both the team and the company? Based on the punishments handed out, it looks like the League is dividing the guilt between the team and Robertson, while giving Leonard a free pass. Ballmer, not surprisingly, denies doing anything wrong and says he's going to sue, but I'll believe that when I see it."

"Where to begin? The Clippers were hit with a $30 million fine, the biggest in NBA history, and they're losing five first-round draft picks over the next decade. In addition, Ballmer and team business president Gillian Zucker were suspended for a year, while basketball president Lawrence Frank was suspended for six months. Let's break that down. The $30 million the Clippers were fined amounts to 0.02 percent of Ballmer's $150 billion net worth. That's a percentage so small and a net worth so large that it's hard to put into perspective. So look at it like this: if you had one million dollars to your name, an equivalent fine would be two hundred bucks, or a pair of upper-level tickets and a couple of hot dogs and Cokes at a Clippers game."

"The real pain for Ballmer is not being able to watch a single minute of his team's games at the Intuit Dome, the $2 billion arena he paid for out of his own pocket, for the next year. People worth $150 billion aren't often told what they can and can't do, so that's a pretty big humiliation for the former Microsoft CEO. Meanwhile, Zucker and Frank are each losing their salary while they're suspended, which isn't going to put them in the poorhouse but probably genuinely hurts. And the organization is losing five first-round draft picks. Which means that the team Ballmer gets to watch (when he is allowed back into his arena) is not going to be as good as the one he hoped to watch when he first signed Kawhi—to say nothing of the fans."

"Robertson, meanwhile, has been banned from having any dealings with the NBA and all its teams for five years. For Uncle Dennis, as he is known in the press and throughout the League, that's about as bad as it can get. A five-year suspension will take him to Leonard's age-40 season, which makes it a de facto lifetime ban. After all, I don't think any other player is going to hire him as their representative after this fiasco. But, given that he is Leonard's uncle and has been his principal advisor since his father died while he was in high school, I imagine Leonard will continue to ensure he is provided for in the manner to which he is accustomed."

"Leonard, for his part, was fined $700,000, the amount of forbidden expenses he took directly from the Clippers. That's roughly what he makes to play in one NBA game. In other words, it's another case of relative chump change, especially when you consider that, according to the League's report, he actually collected $18 million in endorsement money from Aspiration and three other companies the Clippers introduced him to, and he did next to nothing in exchange for that money. That's on top of his $400 million in legitimate career earnings in the NBA."

"Leonard's official statement reinforces the notion that he was a victim in this case, not one of the perpetrators:

"Integrity and respect for this game are fundamental to who I am. I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family. I entered into my contract with the Clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone's part to circumvent the salary cap."

"If this whole thing feels like a giant whitewash to you, you're not alone. How exactly do you "accept full responsibility" while still blaming the whole thing on "people within my inner circle"? Leonard signed contracts with all those companies that were paying him money he wasn't allowed."

"And it was widely reported in 2019 that Uncle Dennis had previously solicited teams for all sorts of perks the League's collective bargaining agreement didn't permit, including an ownership stake in whatever team he signed with, a private jet at his disposal, and free housing, which probably doesn't mean a room at the Motel 6. He could have reined his uncle in then, or sent him packing, but instead he seems to have told him to find a better way to circumvent the cap. Does that sound like "integrity and respect" to you?"

"What it comes down to is that the League seems to have negotiated with the players' union to give Kawhi a slap on the wrist in exchange for the union not taking the case to arbitration. And now that the team is almost guaranteed to be terrible for the foreseeable future, thanks to all the draft picks they've lost, Kawhi is heading out of town, back to the Toronto Raptors , where he won a championship in 2019. So, in the end, the Clippers pay for Kawhi and his uncle's greed, while Ballmer has to spend the next year living the life of a guy with $150 billion who doesn't own an NBA team."

"The only real victims that I can find any sympathy for are the fans of this hapless organization. Since 1970, when they joined the League as the Buffalo Braves, they've never won a championship, or even made it to the NBA finals. Ballmer was supposed to be their savior, following the horrors of the Donald Sterling era. Kawhi was supposed to lead them to the promised land. But, considering the way things are going, the wait for a Clippers championship isn't likely to end anytime soon."

The NBA legend thinks that the investigation made it pretty clear that the Clippers were guilty of violating almost every principle.

The Clippers received a historic punishment , which included a $30 million fine, the loss of five first-round picks, and one-year suspensions for Steve Ballmer and business veteran Gillian Zucker, while Lawrence Frank got a six-month suspension.

But Abdul-Jabbar believes Leonard escaped with a very light punishment.

Kawhi Leonard was ordered to pay $700,000 in restitution after the investigation found that he had received over $18 million in endorsement agreements with Aspiration and three other companies .

The six-time champion was very doubtful of Leonard's statement after the investigation . Leonard said he had accepted full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people in his circle, as he maintained that he entered the agreements in good faith and had no knowledge of an attempt to circumvent the salary cap.

Kareem was not convinced, as he pointed to Robertson's history. He referenced reports from Leonard's 2019 free agency, when his uncle wanted benefits that were explicitly prohibited under the collective bargaining agreement, and questioned why Leonard allowed Robertson to continue handling his affairs afterward.

Ultimately, Kareem believes the Clippers and their fans have been left carrying the biggest consequences as Kawhi Leonard prepares to move on to the Toronto Raptors, as the trade is nearly finalized.

For Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Clippers fans are the only people in this entire scandal who deserve a little bit of sympathy. After decades without an NBA Finals appearance, they now face an uncertain future, and this time without five crucial first-round picks.