The Los Angeles Clippers are being roasted online after new allegations surfaced about payments made to Kawhi Leonard through a company funded by team owner Steve Ballmer.
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Fans quickly resurfaced an old June 2023 birthday post from the Clippers that tied Leonard to Aspiration, a tree-planting company backed by Ballmer. In the post, the team claimed Aspiration would plant one tree for every comment and retweet. Now, with Aspiration bankrupt and its co-founder facing fraud charges, that promotion has turned into meme fodder — with fans ruthlessly trolling both Leonard and the franchise.
The backlash followed new reporting from Pablo Torre, who uncovered documents showing Leonard had a $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration. Despite the money, Leonard never once publicly promoted the company. A former employee told Torre the arrangement was "essentially to circumvent the salary cap" to benefit the Clippers.
Happy Birthday, Kawhi!🥳
For every comment/retweet, @Aspiration will plant one tree for Kawhi's birthday! pic.twitter.com/dHOS8sgyWT
— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) June 29, 2023
The team has issued a statement calling the allegations "provably false." But with Aspiration's collapse and Leonard's name on a massive endorsement deal that never produced a single ad, the optics are damaging at best.
The NBA has yet to weigh in, but the league will likely be forced to investigate. When Leonard joined the Clippers in 2019, the league already looked into claims that his camp made improper requests of other teams during free agency. In light of this, those questions are not going away.
The Clippers, like all other NBA teams, begin training camp at the end of this month.
