Kawhi Leonard’s life just became even more complicated than it already was. The 35-year-old, Los Angeles Clippers star is potentially about to be under investigation — again. Leonard already had his trade from the Clippers to the Toronto Raptors this offseason put on hold. The NBA is still investigating a questionable sponsorship deal with a now-bankrupt company. And now, after the latest report that surfaced on Thursday, Leonard appears to be in even deeper trouble.
This new report, broken yet again by Pablo Torre, alleges that Leonard had an additional undisclosed sponsorship deal with Daktronics. Daktronics is the company that designed the video-board inside Intuit Dome. According to Torre, the deal was another way for Clippers owner, Steve Ballmer, to circumvent the salary cap.
This is eerily similar to the ongoing investigation over Leonard’s relationship with Aspiration. That investigation stems from the report that in 2022, the green banking company allegedly paid Leonard millions for a “no-show” endorsement deal.
Pablo Torre Drops Another Bombshell Kawhi Leonard Report
During Thursday’s episode of his podcast, “Pablo Torre Finds Out”, Torre revealed he confirmed this information by speaking with someone who identified as an “anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome”. Torre presented audio evidence, albeit distorted, directly from the “anonymous source”.
“This was talked about just openly within the organization, and from people working on the project that Kawhi was a spokesperson for Daktronics. It was just openly joked about within people who working on the project who knew about this that this was 1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap,” the anonymous source said.
Daktronics is a South Dakota-based company that designed “The Halo Board” inside Intuit Dome. It is currently the largest double-sided halo display built in any arena.
There’s no official report on when Leonard allegedly began his sponsorship deal with Daktronics. There’s also no information on what the terms of the alleged contract included. However, a spokesperson who represented Daktronics (G.F. Bunting Co.) told Hunterbrook Media, the group that collaborated with Torre in these findings, conflicting information on Leonard’s current involvement with the company.
“My understanding is Daktronics doesn’t have a deal with Kawhi right now. I don’t know what the company wants to say, or can say, given the Wachtell investigation and all that,” the unnamed spokesperson said. Wachtell is a reference to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the law firm leading the NBA’s investigation into Leonard’s dealings with Aspiration.
Torre’s Source Believes Clippers Circumvented Salary Cap
The anonymous source continued to provide a look behind the scenes as per the conversations regarding Leonard and Daktronics.
“People at Daktronics, people within the Clippers organization themselves, had told me about this multi-million deal with Kawhi and Daktronics. They’re not a company that you would see a celebrity endorser for. It wasn’t coming out of their end. The Clippers were technically kind of funding it. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi,” the anonymous source said.
One former high-level, Clippers official provided further proof that Leonard and Daktronics had engaged in this deal.
“I know Kawhi had a sponsorship with Daktronics,” a former high-level Clippers official said.
As of Thursday evening, the Clippers had reportedly not responded to a request for comment on this situation.
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