Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard’s name gets dragged in a “no-show” endorsement deal with a fraudulent company

Kawhi Leonard joined the Los Angeles Clippers right after winning the NBA Championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019. And he has been with the team since then, even though there have been a lot of injuries over the past 5 years.

Now, a new report has been made public, which shows that he signed an endorsement deal with a fraudulent tree-planting company, which was apparently funded by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.

Kawhi Leonard's "no-show job" Deal

According to Pablo Torre of the podcast show Pablo Torre Finds Out, in March 2025, a multi-billion-dollar company called Aspiration, endorsed by many celebrities, filed for bankruptcy. It was later discovered to be an allegedly fraudulent tree-planting company, and in the list of creditors named during the bankruptcy filing, an LLC caught the eyes of a select few.

Aspiration owes $7 million to a company called KL2 Aspire LLC, and Kawhi Leonard was the name in the manager/member name section of the company.

So allegedly, Leonard signed a $28M “no-show job” endorsement deal with the fraudulent company, a company that was also allegedly funded by $50 million from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. According to sources, it was done “to circumvent the salary cap,” and KL did not have to do any endorsement or show up anywhere for Aspiration.

Pablo Torre talked to a former Aspiration employee to verify his discovery

Pablo Torre, after getting his hands on this, did not stop there and went as far as to contact former Aspiration employees. He got a few responses, and one of them told Torre that Kawhi Leonard basically signed a ghost deal. Many are speculating that this was probably the reason for him to sign with the Los Angeles Clippers back in 2019.

Former front-office executives Amin Elhassan and David Samson were also present during the show. The Clippers have since made a statement on the episode's content, saying: "Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false." The company Aspiration is currently being probed by the U.S. government, so we may get to learn more about this soon.

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