Mark Cuban doesn’t seem interested in faulting Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer for the Kawhi Leonard salary cap scandal, regardless of the evidence Pablo Torre puts in front of him.
Earlier this week, Torre released a [bombshell episode of his podcast](https://awfulannouncing.com/nba/pablo-torre-bombshell-episode-clippers-kawhi-leonard-circumvented-salary-cap.html) alleging the Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard broke NBA salary cap rules. According to _Pablo Torre Finds Out_, the Clippers and Leonard allegedly circumvented the salary cap with a $28 million no-show endorsement deal through a company called Aspiration.
Wednesday afternoon, Cuban [responded to Torre’s report](https://awfulannouncing.com/nba/mark-cuban-defense-steve-ballmer-pablo-torre-los-angeles-clippers-salary-cap.html) by claiming he is “Team Ballmer” and accusing the investigative podcast host of bias. Torre invited Cuban to discuss on his podcast, and the former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks accepted.
We know the Clippers signed a $300 million sponsorship deal with Aspiration in 2021. We know Ballmer invested $50 million of his own money in the company. We know the company gave Leonard a $28 million endorsement deal to do absolutely nothing, shortly after the NBA star signed a contract with the Clippers. And we know Aspiration later filed for bankruptcy, with co-founder Joseph Sanberg recently pleading guilty to wire fraud charges after scamming investors. Where Torre and Cuban differ, however, is what Ballmer knew about the deal.
Torre and Cuban spoke for nearly three hours on the subject for a podcast episode that was whittled down to 75 minutes. Both parties were unwavering in their stances during the conversation that grew tense at times but stayed respectful. Torre believes Ballmer knew about the cap circumvention, while Cuban maintains there’s no way the Clippers would risk the potential penalties at stake. The difference, however, is that Torre leaned on the evidence in his reporting to condemn Ballmer, while Cuban leaned on assuming the Clippers owner would be smarter than that.
“If Ballmer was involved, he’s a f\*cking moron,” Cuban claimed.
During his attempted debate with Torre, Cuban assumed Ballmer wouldn’t want to break the rules of cap circumvention. He assumed Ballmer was smart and business savvy, and he assumed Ballmer did his due diligence on Aspiration. What Cuban wouldn’t assume, however, is that an owner who is desperate to win and who has more expendable money than the NBA will let him spend on his team might search for creative ways to get some of that cash to his players, even if it bends league rules.
Torre even pointed to the fact that in 2015, Ballmer’s Clippers were fined $250,000 for attempting to circumvent cap rules by offering Deandre Jordan unauthorized endorsements deals through Lexus. At the time, the Clippers were attempting to lure Jordan away from Cuban’s Mavericks. And despite already seeing a player spurn the Mavericks for a contract offer with the Clippers that included an attempt to circumvent the cap, Cuban remained “Team Ballmer.”
To counter Ballmer previously getting caught a decade ago, Cuban said the Clippers owner “hopefully learned his lesson.”
According to Torre, he has seven sources, all of whom are former Aspiration employees who claimed that Leonard’s cap circumvention was common knowledge within the company. And while Cuban acknowledged Leonard signed the deal with Aspiration to circumvent the cap, he maintained Ballmer likely just didn’t know about it. Further, Cuban believes nobody with the Clippers knew about it.
Cuban pushed back on Torre’s sources all coming from inside the fraudulent company, claiming the investigative podcast host wasn’t giving the scammers enough credit. According to Cuban, the scammers could have been telling these employees Ballmer was in on the cap circumvention, as part of their continued scamming. Because scammers gonna scam.
If Ballmer knew about the cap circumvention, Cuban believes he would have invested more money in Aspiration to save them from bankruptcy. But if Ballmer became suspicious or aware that one of the scammers might plead guilty to wire fraud, wouldn’t the Clippers owner want to get out as quickly as possible? There’s no way Ballmer would continue handing Aspiration millions of dollars while knowing a federal investigation was looming, right? Wrong, according to Cuban.
So, Cuban believes Ballmer is too smart to risk getting caught trying to circumvent the cap, even though Ballmer was already caught trying to circumvent the cap ten years ago. But Cuban doesn’t believe Ballmer would be smart enough to stop investing in a company led by a potential criminal facing federal investigation?
Cuban still holds a minority stake with the Mavericks. And as a competing owner, Cuban insists he would love to see Ballmer and the Clippers penalized for attempting to circumvent the cap, but he just doesn’t see the leverage proposition.
Credit Cuban for agreeing to do the podcast with Torre, but this very much felt like a student who showed up for a test without doing any preparation first. And to put himself in a tougher situation, Cuban was debating the person who wrote the test.
Maybe Cuban is right, and all of Torre’s reporting and evidence against Ballmer and the Clippers will eventually be proved amiss. Aspiration scammed a lot of people, maybe Torre is just their latest victim. But Cuban was attempting to make that argument with seemingly no evidence.