Adam Silver enters the 2025-26 NBA season with more than the usual spotlight. Now in his 12th year as the NBA commissioner, he is navigating an ongoing salary cap circumvention investigation tied to Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard, a two-time NBA champion, and team’s owner Steve Ballmer.
How soon will the league issue a decision on Leonard and the Clippers?
How Will Adam Silver Handle the Los Angeles Clippers-Kawhi Leonard Case?
In an exclusive interview with Sports Illustrated, Silver reflected on many aspects of the case and other questions concerning the league.
During the conversation, an NBA correspondent first raised the ongoing investigation into the Leonard-Clippers $28 million scandal involving a four-year sponsorship deal with Aspiration Inc.
The company under investigation is a former team sponsor that was to aid Leonard with approximately $28 million in sponsorship for essentially not doing anything. As a result of this report, Silver and the league took swift action and assembled a team of investigators to investigate the matter.
Amid these questions, many executives had asked the league commissioner what he thought defined “circumstantial evidence” in this case and how the league would decide whether the scandal had occurred. Silver responded to this during the exclusive conversation with SI.
Silver said, “Somebody asked me if circumstantial evidence is enough, and just as in a court of law, sometimes there’s direct evidence and sometimes there’s circumstantial evidence. And certainly, circumstantial evidence alone doesn’t prevent findings for one particular side.”
He added, “But then, even in the case of circumstantial evidence, you look at the totality of the circumstances. So it’s not formulaic. We will look at everything that’s presented to us, and that includes inferences that come from evidence as well.”
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Next, Silver reflected on the potential timeline of this investigation by saying, “I really don’t know. I can say it will take some time, just based on past experience. From the reporting so far, many of the sources are anonymous, but there are several of them. And you have here a separate court proceeding.”
He added, “We have a guilty plea [by Aspiration cofounder Joe Sanberg for wire fraud]. So there’s a fair amount of evidence for us to look at. The stakes are very high here. We, as a league, want to be careful and make sure that not only are we being fair to the Clippers and Steve Ballmer, but also that we have a true understanding of whatever happened here.”
Meanwhile, as the investigation continues, the Clippers, led by star Leonard, will kick off their 2025-26 NBA campaign when they travel to Utah to take on the Jazz at Delta Center on Wednesday night.
