Report: Kawhi Had Undisclosed Daktronics Deal
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- Kawhi Leonard allegedly had an undisclosed sponsorship deal worth millions with Daktronics, the South Dakota company that designed the Clippers' "Halo Board" at Intuit Dome, per Pablo Torre's podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out."
- An anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome told Torre the Daktronics arrangement "was 1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap," funneling money from the Clippers through the company back to Leonard.
- A Daktronics spokesperson told Hunterbrook Media that Leonard doesn't have an active contract and referenced the "Wachtell investigation" — the law firm leading the NBA probe into Leonard's 2022 Aspiration endorsement.
- The NBA launched its investigation in September after Torre cited internal documents showing Steve Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration through his personal LLC in September 2021, the same month the Clippers signed a 23-year, $300 million deal making Aspiration Intuit Dome's "first founding partner."
- Aspiration then signed its $28 million endorsement deal with Leonard in April 2022; an unnamed employee told Torre that deal "was to circumvent the salary cap."
- Ballmer has said the Clippers lost their entire $60 million Aspiration investment and were "flagrantly defrauded"; co-founder Joseph Sanberg was sentenced in June to 14 years in federal prison for defrauding investors and lenders out of $248 million.
Why it matters: If substantiated, the Daktronics allegation transforms the NBA probe from a single disputed $28 million endorsement into a potential second cap-circumvention vehicle at the same franchise — making Ballmer's "flagrantly defrauded" defense on the Aspiration side harder to repeat for a sponsorship Leonard allegedly negotiated directly.
