Best of NBA News Part 1: Kawhi Leonard on HOLD + OVER spend on Austin Reaves? + Rui Hachimura SIGNS with Clippers + Tyler Herro SALTY over Giannis trade

**Shannon Sharpe** (0:00)
Hey guys, it's your favorite Unc here. Go ahead and click that subscribe button below so you don't miss a single episode of Nightcap. That button right here. Come for the sports, stay for the stories.
The Clippers and the Toronto Raptors trade, centered on Kawhi Leonard, will not be complete until the NBA investigation, where the Clippers circumvented the salary cap, is completed. The Clippers and the Raptors agreed to a trade on June 30th that would send the NBA, the all NBA forward to Toronto for Brandon Ingram, Grady Ik, protected first round draft pick in 2031, 2033, and a 27 first round pick swap in two second round picks. The NBA's investigation to the Clippers is focused on whether they circumvented the salary cap by funneling money to Kawhi through a $28 million endorsement deal with a green banking company, Aspiration, which also had 300 million 23 year endorsement deal with the team. Team owner Steve Barmer, who invested $60 million in Aspiration, has denied he had any knowledge of Kawhi's deal. The Clippers on Thursday said they did not funnel money to Kawhi learners through Aspiration, and there were victims of fraud initiated by Aspiration's co-founder Joe Sandberg. Sandberg was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Joe, the NBA loves the billionaires until they found out how they really do business. What do you make of this situation? Pablo Torre, he has a podcast, he was at ESPN and he did an in depth deep dive. He had documentation of saying, okay, this is what they were doing. He had a $28 million endorsement deal in which he didn't have to show up. He had other perks that he didn't have to do anything and he just received those perks. Now it is noted, he went, him and his uncle, Dennis approached the Toronto Raptors about a very, very similar situation. They wanted part of the team and they wanted this and they wanted that. And the upper management told him, that's illegal, we can't do that. We're circumventing the salary cap and the league found this out basically in a long story short, they're gonna punish just severely. It was reported that they brought the same thing to the Lakers and the Lakers and Genie Bustle, we can't do that. And lo and behold, the one team didn't sign with Toronto, he didn't sign with the Lakers, the one team that seemingly, that's what it looks like allegedly, he signed with. But this is what's being reported. And they say they're not gonna let this thing go through until they do their deep dive investigation. In order to sign the Clippers, Kawhi reportedly sought assurances that they would extend far beyond the basketball floor. According to the athletic Kawhi's advisor, Uncle Dennis requested ownership staking companies, corporate sponsorship and no show endorsement deals that allow Kawhi to collect millions in revenue without doing any actual work. Pablo Torre found that Kawhi and his employees divide the foolproof system to secure Kawhi an additional $28 million in funding. Additionally, Pablo Torre, investigating, found the aspiration offered Kawhi an additional $20 million on top of the $28 million nest egg, meaning he was due to collect $48 million.
The mechanism for Kawhi collect the said resources was KL2 Inspire LLC, a company owned by Kawhi and Uncle Dennis, if I'm not mistaken, the Kawhi partner with Steve Barmer led Aspiration, a tree planting company that went bust in March of 2025 Joe, what are you making of this?
I can hold your honest opinion.
Hell, it probably did happen. If you're just going to be, I'm saying, listen, because you know, y'all know how billionaires move, bro. They, damn friend, we always going to be a little uneven, you know what I mean? But I think to get Kawhi to commit, hell man, this probably was an under the table deal, bro. Hey, hey, we're going to take care of you, we're going to make sure you make plenty of money off the court. Hey, they just mess around and got caught. Now, the NBA could have do a deep dive, and I know they resented the Chris Powell deal back when he was with the Hornets, they didn't let that deal go through. You remember what they did to Joe Smith? Yeah. When he had that deal, he signed that deal with Minnesota. Yeah. They put Minnesota in hell for the foreseeable future. It took, they draft picked for the next three years, they said, no, you cannot resign Joe Johnson. Excuse me, Joe Johnson, Joe Smith. And so he had a big time deal on the table. That they were, hey, we're gonna go ahead and sign this thing soon as the season over, woo woo woo. And somebody got mad and they went to the league office and told the league office and David Stern did not play that foolishness. So he hammered them.