The former CEO of Aspiration, the company that LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is accused of using to circumvent the salary cap, said Friday that claims that Kawhi Leonard signed a no-show contract with his former company are false.
“The contract contained three pages of extensive obligations that Leonard had to perform,” Andrei Cherny, who left the company in 2022, wrote in a statement posted on X. “And the contract clearly said that if Leonard did not meet those obligations, Aspiration could terminate the contract.”
Last week, the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast reported that Aspiration had agreed to a four-year, $28 million endorsement deal with Leonard in 2022. Ballmer invested $50 million in the company through his personal LLC in September 2021, and the Clippers announced a $300 million partnership with Aspiration two weeks later. An unnamed employee who purportedly worked for Aspiration told Torre that the payment to Leonard “was to circumvent the salary cap.”
On Thursday, Torre reported that Clippers limited partner Dennis J. Wong invested $1.99 million in Aspiration in 2022, nine days before the company made an overdue $1.75 million payment to Leonard. The Athletic reported Friday that Ballmer invested an additional $10 million into Aspiration in 2023 as part of a fundraising round with other previous Aspiration investors.
In a statement obtained by Torre, three former Aspiration executives who reported to Cherny said they didn’t agree with the company’s decision to sign the Leonard deal as it “did not reflect any strategy previously communicated to us.” When contacted by ESPN, Mike Shuckerow, the company’s former chief operating officer and chief legal officer and who was among those quoted in the statement, confirmed its contents.
“The team expressed concerns at the time regarding the high cost of the arrangement and its lack of alignment with Aspiration’s brand and business strategy,” they said in the statement. “While subsequent marketing efforts were undertaken, they were ultimately discontinued and should not be interpreted as support for the deal itself.”
The NBA is investigating whether Ballmer or the Clippers violated league rules. The Clippers have denied wrongdoing, and Ballmer has said he had no knowledge of the endorsement contract or that he directed the company to sign one.
In his statement on X, Cherny said he signed the contract with Leonard in 2022.
“In the months of discussion among our executives before signing the sponsorship, I don’t remember conversations about the NBA salary cap,” Cherny said. “I signed the contract shortly before I submitted my resignation, but before I left there were numerous internal conversations about the various things Aspiration was planning to do with Leonard once the 2022-23 season began. … I can’t speak to what was done or not done after I left — or why.”
When reached Friday, Cherny declined to comment beyond the statement.
Aspiration filed for bankruptcy in 2025, and its co-founder Joe Sanberg pleaded guilty last month to two counts of wire fraud for defrauding investors and lenders of more than $248 million.
