Clippers Get the Same Five-Pick Penalty Minnesota Did

The NBA stripped the Los Angeles Clippers of five first-round picks on Sept. 2, 2026, for salary cap circumvention built around Kawhi Leonard. The haul matches the penalty David Stern laid on the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 after the Joe Smith side deal, with one change that will shape the next decade in Los Angeles: Leonard’s contract still stands.

The Same Five-Pick Penalty Minnesota Got in 2000

On Oct. 25, 2000, Stern voided Smith’s contracts and five picks, fined Minnesota $3.5 million, and turned Smith into a free agent after an arbitrator found a secret promise of a later payday. More than 25 years later, commissioner Adam Silver reached for the same number of firsts, this time over sponsor deals the league says the Clippers opened for Leonard with companies already doing business with the club.

The league’s statement called the Clippers a prior offender of the cap rules and said Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz found a pattern of misconduct. Silver tied the size of the penalty to the scale of what the probe described.

I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.

Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, Sept. 2 statement

The old Minnesota file and the new Clippers file are not twins. Smith took short, below-market deals so the Timberwolves could later pay him as a Bird free agent. Leonard’s case, as the league tells it, ran through off-court checks from team partners. The punishment still arrived in the same shape: five firsts, a club fine, and an owner told to sit.

What the NBA Took From the Clippers on Wednesday

The league ordered the Clippers to forfeit five first-round draft picks, one in each of the 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033 drafts, and to pay a $30 million fine. Owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team work for one year. President of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year. President of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months. The club also enters a five-year compliance program run by the league office.

PENALTIES IN 2000 AND ON SEPT. 2

Ballmer’s year away is for knowingly trying to help Leonard land off-court income, for approving a business deal he knew was a precondition for Aspiration Partners to sign Leonard, and for failing to set rules his staff would follow. Zucker, the league said, was primarily and directly culpable for the sponsor arrangements and gave false and misleading statements to investigators. Frank was cited for those arrangements and for approving improper expenses for Leonard and his family.

The league account went out on the official communications feed as the penalties became public.

The NBA announced today that the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard have been penalized for violating the salary cap circumvention rules contained in the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with the National Basketball Players Association.

Full Release: https://t.co/EQgxDWSsBp

— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) September 2, 2026

Leonard Pays $700,000 and Keeps His Deal

Leonard must pay the league $700,000. There is no suspension and no voided contract. The NBA said he broke the rules through the conduct of Dennis Robertson, his uncle and then-business manager, by pressing the Clippers for off-court income, getting those deals, and failing to repay personal expenses the club covered.

Robertson is banned for five years from doing business with NBA teams and their affiliates on behalf of any player, staffer, or other league or team employee. Leonard fired him in June. In 2000, Smith lost the contract in hand and the Bird rights that would have let Minnesota keep paying him over the cap. Leonard keeps both, which also leaves a paused trade to Toronto free of a voided-deal problem.

Through agent Harrison Gaines, Leonard put the blame on people around him and said he did not know of any plan to get around the cap.

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.

Kawhi Leonard, via agent Harrison Gaines, Sept. 2

That split is why the Clippers’ next five firsts matter more than the check Leonard writes. A $700,000 bill does not restock a roster. Five missing firsts do the opposite, and they land on a club that had already shipped first-round capital to Oklahoma City in 2019 to bring in Paul George and open the door for Leonard as a free agent.

Two Timberwolves Firsts Came Back After a Confession

Minnesota’s five-pick order did not hold in full. After Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale took leaves of absence, the league returned the 2003 first-rounder. On Dec. 28, 2001, it restored Minnesota’s 2005 first-round pick. Stern said the other penalties, and the team’s conduct after the Smith matter ended, made that step appropriate. The Timberwolves still lost the 2001, 2002 and 2004 firsts.

Taylor took responsibility at the time. The Clippers are on the other path. They say they will fight. The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association have already signed an agreement that the penalties are final and binding on all parties, which is the first wall that fight has to climb.

FROM JOE SMITH TO WEDNESDAY’S RULING

1. Oct. 25, 2000: Stern takes Minnesota’s 2001 through 2005 first-round picks, fines the club $3.5 million, and voids Joe Smith’s contracts.
2. Dec. 28, 2001: The league returns the 2005 first-rounder after Minnesota’s owner and GM sit out; the 2003 pick is also restored, leaving 2001, 2002 and 2004 gone.
3. Sept. 3, 2025: The podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out airs the first episode on a four-year, $28 million Aspiration deal with Leonard, and the NBA hires Wachtell Lipton soon after.
4. Sept. 2, 2026: Silver’s office takes Clippers firsts in 2029 through 2033, fines the club $30 million, and leaves Leonard’s contract in force.

The 2005 restore is the line every Clippers executive will read twice. Stern cited the team’s conduct after the case closed. A club that calls the probe biased and promises arbitration is not copying the file that got two picks back.

Four Partner Deals and a $10 Million Target

The Wachtell summary, which describes 73 interviews of 60 people and a review of more than 200,000 pages, says the Clippers opened off-court income for Leonard with four companies already tied to the team. Investigators also logged hundreds of club payments for personal air and ground travel, rooms, gifts, and tickets for Leonard, his family, and Robertson, without taking those sums out of Leonard’s pay as the labor deal requires.

Within months of Leonard’s July 2019 signing, Robertson told Ballmer, Frank, and Zucker he wanted help getting about $10 million a year off the court. Notes Frank took in 2020, as quoted in the summary, have Robertson telling Ballmer that Zucker was making introductions for bad deals and that he had to get paid. Ballmer, per those notes, called Clippers staff “collective workers to try to help [Leonard] achieve his financial goals.”

THE FOUR COMPANIES NAMED BY THE LEAGUE

• Aspiration Partners: A now-bankrupt sustainability firm that signed Leonard to a four-year, $28 million endorsement the podcast said required no public work.
• Boingo Wireless: A network company doing business with the club; investigators say it later stopped cooperating after giving answers they did not trust.
• Daktronics: A scoreboard maker; the probe says the Clippers induced a Leonard deal by steering team business.
• Lockton Insurance: A brokerage that, the summary says, refused to cooperate with investigators at all.

Aspiration’s bankruptcy trustee and Daktronics did cooperate. Joe Sanberg, Aspiration’s co-founder, sat for an interview as a convicted felon for fraud at the company; investigators said they used him only where other records backed him up. The Clippers, the summary adds, had already been investigated by the NBA over Leonard, which is why Ballmer’s failure to set a clean process is treated as a repeat miss rather than a first offense.

Why the Clippers Are Fighting a Closed Case

Hours after the ruling, the Clippers said they reject the findings and will use every path they have, including what they call impartial arbitration. The league says the union has already locked the penalties in. Those two sentences cannot both be easy.

WHERE THE SIDES SPLIT

• The introductions: The club argues it acted as a middleman when partners asked for a player contact, which it says the operations manual allows. Investigators say the team started the deals, helped set terms, and tied them to club business.
• Ballmer’s role: The ruling says he knew an Aspiration team deal was the price of Leonard’s endorsement. The club has said from the start that he was taken in by a failing company, not a cap scheme.
• What happens next: The NBA and the union call the penalties final. Ballmer lawyer David N. Kelley, in a letter to Silver, called the probe a witch hunt, said the report went out without notice to the club, and said the team is exploring every legal remedy.

The team’s public statement went further than a routine denial.

We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence. What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure its fairness and accuracy.

Los Angeles Clippers, team statement, Sept. 2, 2026

Kelley also wrote that Ballmer spent nearly $50 million funding the probe he now calls unfair. Wachtell, for its part, said Clippers counsel at times delayed document production and worked in an adversarial way, while still giving the club every chance to put facts in. Zucker’s credibility, the summary said, suffered from shifting stories and a habit of pointing at subordinates. Frank, by contrast, walked investigators through his own notes and took blame for staff he oversaw, which tracks with the shorter unpaid ban.

Ballmer Misses a Full Season of League Work

Ballmer is out of team and league activity for a year. Zucker is out a year without pay. Frank is out six months without pay. The five-year monitor sits on whoever is left to run the basketball side and the business side while those suspensions run. For a club that just opened a new building and has been trying to win with aging stars, that is a long stretch to operate with the owner and both presidents on the sideline.

The forfeited firsts are the part that will still be on the books when those suspensions expire. Minnesota kept making the playoffs for a few years after 2000, then watched the young talent dry up. The Clippers do not have a Kevin Garnett in his prime to paper over a dead draft. They have a $30 million fine, a year without Ballmer, and five drafts in a row with no first-round card of their own.

Wachtell is still taking information, including material that arrived in the week of the report, and the league said it will consider further action as appropriate. The Clippers say they will fight. The union already signed the paper that says the fight is over.