LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer reacts against the San Antonio Spurs in the first half at Intuit Dome.
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
It's been about a week since the Los Angeles Clippers were handed a hefty punishment from the league after findings of cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard. Steve Ballmer was probably given the biggest punishment, as he's suspended from all league and team activities for a year.
Pablo Torres has been tracking this story since last year around this time, and in the end, his reporting was accurate. With the punishment handed down, Torres is still hearing things about what could've happened if Ballmer settled with the NBA instead of saying the findings were false.
“The NBA was looking forward to settling for this to not be five 1st-round picks, $30 million, and all these suspensions,” Torres said on his show. “This is what you get when you don't settle.
"Steve Ballmer was fundamentally uninterested in settling. The NBA was looking forward to settling for this to not be five 1st-round picks and $30 million and all these suspensions."
– Pablo Torre 👀
(via @pablofindsout)pic.twitter.com/nH9BMmWNZ5
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) September 9, 2026
“And also, in some form or fashion, when you actively try to tell a version of events that is not what is reflected in the reality of this report, which I am told, Steve Ballmer and Team Ballmer, legal team, and the Clippers, they were not told a punishment, but they were told, ‘Here's what we got.' And if you don't go forward to negotiate, given that, you end up getting the biggest punishment in the history of the NBA, within a scope.”
It seems like Ballmer didn't want to come forward with telling the NBA what they wanted to know, and now the Clippers basically have the next few years of their future stripped away. Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker was suspended without pay for one year, and Lawrence Frank was suspended without pay for six months.
Leonard was also punished, as the league fined him $700,000 in restitution, while his uncle, Dennis Robertson, was banned from conducting business with the NBA for five years.