There have been some wild stories in the NBA this summer, but none that are as crazy as the Kawhi Leonard-Clippers situation. The league is currently conducting investigations into reports that Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled extra money to Leonard through a company known as Aspiration. If proven true, it would be a blatant violation of NBA salary cap rules.
Advertisement
The epic tale got even juicier when ESPN analyst Pablo Torre dropped what he called a “smoking gun,” tying Kawhi’s money to some shady investment that involves Dennis Wong, a minority owner of the Clippers. With many layers in the scandal, it is proving to be quite confusing.
This type of situation can only be made sense of by one man, Mark Cuban. The 67-year-old billionaire weighed in on the issue on the Road Trippin podcast, and he doesn’t see Torre’s bombshell as too big a deal.
“Well, that’s nothing,” stated Cuban, who explained that he’s seen this kind of thing hundreds of times in business. To him, the story reads more like a scam than an NBA drama.
Basically, Wong invested $1.99 million in Aspiration two or three years back, and Kawhi was supposedly paid $1.75 million around the same time. Cuban says those numbers aren’t connected.
Aspiration was losing money hand over fist in 2022, which is why Cuban isn’t buying that this was some secret Clippers scheme. He then told the panel that he himself has endured the brunt of several scams.
“I’ve looked at numbers where people put together fake bank statements and pocketed the cash,” admitted Cuban. That’s exactly what he thinks happened here.
Wong’s daughter also worked for Aspiration, according to the former Mavericks owner. He says that’s the part people are missing. She likely got her dad involved, which dragged him into the mess. “That’s what scammers do,” he said before calling it a straight-up Bernie Madoff-style ripoff. Not an NBA controversy.
Cuban also believed that Wong wasn’t trying to scam anyone intentionally. He just wanted Kawhi to get his money. The investment angle? Completely separate. “I don’t care, just pay me,” Cuban stated as if he were Wong himself.
If there is one person who has the right to be skeptical about these allegations, it’s Cuban. He’s been burned by investments before. “I made investments based off of trust,” he said. It doesn’t take much for someone to fudge the numbers and take the cash.
For Cuban, it seems that this story isn’t really about the Clippers or Kawhi. It’s about trust, money, and a company that went sideways. Aspiration was losing cash fast, and Wong got dragged into it through his daughter, according to the former principal and current minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Torre’s story is really a cautionary tale for anyone investing in risky ventures, at least according to Cuban. The Kawhi-Clippers-Aspiration drama is as messy as it gets. But has there been a secret plot or conspiracy here? Cuban believes it is just business gone wrong.
We hear so much about the ins and outs of NBA business. It’s quite hard to figure out exactly what happened, but for the first time since the story dropped, a perspective has come out that sounds in favor of the Clippers and Ballmer.
