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https://t.co/iKssT8bDP6

作者:Mike Vorkunov

In March 2023, LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested almost $10 million
into financial technology and sustainability services company Aspiration,
according to legal filings reviewed by The Athletic and corroborated by a
former Aspiration executive.



The previously unreported investment came 18 months after Ballmer’s $50
million investment in the firm now at the heart of an NBA investigation into
whether Clippers star Kawhi Leonard made a side deal to circumvent the NBA’s
salary cap, allegations first reported by the “Pablo Torre Finds Out”
podcast last week.



Ballmer’s $10 million infusion into Aspiration came as the Los Angeles-based
company was hemorrhaging cash, laying off employees and struggling to raise
funds — and it came just three months after a $1.99 million investment by
Dennis Wong, Ballmer’s college roommate and Clippers vice chairman, which
was first reported by “Pablo Torre Finds Out” this week.

Ballmer對Aspiration 10M的融資發生在這家洛杉磯公司資金流失、裁員並且募資困難的時
期--且這發生在Ballmer的大學室友及快艇的副主席Dennis Wong投資1.99M之後。

According to the podcast’s report, Wong’s investment was soon followed by a
$1.75 million payment by Aspiration to Leonard, who signed a $28 million
contract with the company in April 2022.

根據該Podcast的報導，Wong投資後不久，Aspiration隨即向Kawhi Leonard支付了1.75M。
Leonard在2022年4月與Aspiration簽下了一份價值28M的合約。

Ballmer’s 2023 investment was part of a fundraising round made up almost
entirely of previous Aspiration investors, with Wong being the lone
exception. The company hoped to raise $75 million in fresh money but came up
nearly $9 million short. A vast majority of the shares were bought up by
Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg and Ibrahim AlHusseini, another Aspiration
board member. Sanberg later agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges brought
by the Justice Department.



Ballmer’s first investment into Aspiration — a $50 million infusion
alongside $265 million from OakTree Capital, a prominent financial firm —
came in December 2021, three months after Aspiration signed a deal with the
Clippers worth more than $300 million to be a founding sponsor of the team’s
new arena and its jersey patch partner. The Clippers also signed an agreement
to pay Aspiration more than $50 million for carbon offsetting toward the goal
of becoming carbon neutral, according to multiple sources briefed on the deal.



Seven months later, Aspiration inked Leonard to a four-year, $28 million
endorsement contract. Almost immediately, Aspiration struggled to make its
quarterly $1.75 million payments to Leonard, and when the company was late
with a payment that fall, Leonard’s agent, Mitch Frankel, reached out to
company executives.

7個月後，Aspiration與Leonard談了4年28M的贊助合約。而幾乎是同時，Aspiration無法
支付他每季該給Leonard的1.75M款項，而當公司無法支付時，Leonard的經紀人Mitch

88 Investments LLP. Days later, according to reporting by “Pablo Torre Finds
Out,” Aspiration paid Leonard $1.75 million.

在2022年12月，Wong透過DEA 88 Investment LLP投資了將近2M。數天後，便支付了
Leonard 1.75M。

Three months later, according to court documents in a civil suit, Ballmer
invested $9,999,997.92 in the company. Aspiration had been struggling
financially, with just $12.2 million in cash as of Feb. 17, 2023 and running
through more than $2 million a week. The Clippers declined to comment on the
March 2023 investment.



It’s unclear if Aspiration continued paying Leonard, who is listed as a
creditor in Aspiration’s bankruptcy filings for $7 million, as are two
companies representing the Clippers for a combined $50 million.

Aspiration有沒有繼續支付Leonard這名列在Aspiration破產文件上的債權人之一，這件事
情並不清楚，然後在該文件上有2家公司代表快艇仍被積欠50M。

Long before the relationship between Leonard and Aspiration fell under public
scrutiny, it caused confusion within the company itself, according to
ex-employees who spoke with The Athletic. After Sanberg introduced the idea,
members of Aspiration’s executive team believed Leonard’s deal, which was
never announced publicly, held little value to the company. A former
Aspiration C-Suite executive said that the deal “materialized essentially
out of the ether.”



As part of the deal, Leonard also received $20 million in equity via
Aspiration shares that came directly from Sanberg.

“I am personally contributing stock to Kawhi to make this partnership
possible,” Sanberg wrote members of his leadership team in a May 2022 email
obtained by The Athletic. “Aspiration’s CEO judged the deal to be not worth
doing. For avoidance of doubt, any and all benefit to Aspiration from the
Kawhi deal is being subsidized by my contributing my equity to make this
happen.”

作為協議的一部分，Leonard同時也自Sanberg那邊直接收取了價值20M的股票。

在2022年5月的一封電子郵件中，Sanberg對管理團隊寫道：



As part of the agreement, Sanberg also pressured the company to pay for fees
incurred by Frankel, who did not respond to The Athletic‘s request for
comment.

作為協議的一部分，Sanberg同時施壓公司支付定時的款項給Frankel(Kawhi的經紀人)，他
並未回應The Athletic的訪問要求。

While Aspiration executives initially traded ideas on how to incorporate
Leonard in marketing campaigns — including in collaboration with Drake, a
celebrity client and endorser — it never did so. One executive believed the
famously laconic Leonard did not fit as a spokesperson.



The contract specified that Leonard would, among other asks, participate in
one eight-hour day of production, one four-hour day of public relations, two
one-hour community service events, one five-minute segment per week “in
conversation with (Clippers) Coach Ty Lue” while he sat out the 2021-22
season recovering from an injury, “five organic comments/likes/RTs as
requested by Aspiration” and three off-court projects.



But the deal, which allowed Aspiration to terminate it for cause or if
Leonard was no longer playing for the Clippers, also gave Leonard sign-off on
the requests and allowed him to refuse to do anything “not consistent with
his beliefs.”



Emails between Aspiration executives obtained by The Athletic reflected
confusion and frustration with the contract. One marketing executive emailed
that the deal had “pretty big flags” while bemoaning that it only
guaranteed Aspiration one eight-hour production day, adding that Leonard’s
lack of social media presence would “significantly hamper” the company’s
ability to extract value from the deal.



When reached by The Athletic this week, Andrei Cherny, Aspiration’s
co-founder and CEO until 2022, disputed that Leonard had a no-show contract.
He said the beliefs clause is standard for celebrity endorsements and that
the company could end the agreement if Leonard didn’t perform on his end.



“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, including emails from the marketing team about their
plans in just the week before my last day. I can’t speak to what was done or
not done after I left — or why.”



The contract was, however, much richer than Aspiration’s deals with other
endorsers, according to the former executive who related that Leonardo
DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. both received less than $2 million in equity,
while Drake invested $4 million but also received carbon offsets.



Leonard never publicly promoted the company.

然而，值得注意的是，Leonard從未公開替Aspiration宣傳過。

In March 2025, Sanberg was arrested and Aspiration filed for bankruptcy.
Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of defrauding investors
for $248 million. His next plea hearing is next week. An attorney for Sanberg
declined to comment.

2025年3月，Sanberg被逮捕，Aspiration宣告破產。根據法院紀錄，Sanberg已同意對詐騙
投資人248M的聯邦指控認罪。他的下一場認罪聽證會將在下週舉行。至於案件細節，
Sanberg的律師拒絕發表評論。

In August, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Sanberg
inflated the company’s revenue and duped investors, using Aspiration shares
to take out more than $100 million in personal loans. The SEC’s complaint
pointed specifically to two investors, including one who bought $50 million
in shares between September and December 2021.

2024年8月，美國證券交易委員會指控Sanberg誇大公司營收並欺騙投資人，利用


Aspiration employees said that Sanberg built and maintained a relationship
with Ballmer to convince him to invest in the company. During a deposition
last October, when the Aspiration co-founder was asked whether he was the one
who landed Ballmer as an investor, Sanberg invoked his fifth amendment rights.



“They conned me,” Ballmer told ESPN last week. “I made an investment in
these guys, thinking it was on the up and up, and they con me. At this stage,
I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did, let
alone the specific contract with Kawhi.”



Last week, the NBA announced it had hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen &
Katz, which has previously conducted league investigations into the Clippers
and Phoenix Suns, to determine if Ballmer and the Clippers used Aspiration to
circumvent salary cap restrictions. Ballmer has denied wrongdoing and said
that aside from introducing Leonard to the company, he did not know anything
about Leonard’s endorsement contract.

NBA上週宣布已聘請Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz律師事務所來調查快艇是否透過


If, after the investigation and a ruling by an independent arbitrator, NBA
commissioner Adam Silver determines the Clippers broke league rules, he has
the ability under the collective bargaining agreement to punish the team and
Ballmer by docking draft picks, implementing fines and even voiding Leonard’
s deal.

如果在獨立調查之後NBA總裁Adam Silver真的認定快艇破壞了聯盟規則，他根據CBA將會有
能力沒收選秀權、罰款甚至是作廢Leonard的合約。

At a news conference Wednesday following an NBA board of governors meeting,
Silver  said he will look for more than the “appearance of impropriety” to
penalize the team, adding that the burden of proof is on the league.

“I think the goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was
impropriety,” Silver said. “In a public-facing sport, the public at times
reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false. I would want
anyone else in situations Mr. Ballmer is in now — and Kawhi, for that matter
— to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were
making allegations against me. We’re not a court of law at the end of the
day, either.”

在週三NBA董事會會議後的新聞發佈會上，Silver表示，他將尋找的不僅僅是"不當行為的
表象"，才會對球隊進行處罰，並補充說舉證責任在於聯盟。

Silver說道:"我認為完整調查的目標是要弄清楚是否真的存在不當行為。在一個公開的運
動裡，大眾有時會得出一些結論，但後來卻被證明完全是錯的。我希望任何處在Mr.
Ballmer和Kawhi這樣情境中的人，都能被一視同仁，就像如果有人對我提出指控時，我也
希望能受到同樣對待一樣。最終，我們並不是法院。"



心得:

基本上 Torre(原本爆料的人)大翻車

1. Ballmer在公司快倒的時候又丟10M進去燒 Wong可能是他後來又多拉下水的新投資人

2. Cherny(前任CEO)表示高層內部從未提過這合約要繞過薪資上限

3. Sanberg給Kawhi 20M的股票很有可能跟28M是同一筆(也有可能是分開 但Email看起來是
說我負責這樣) 是為了要讓公司其他高層閉嘴 所以自己拿出20M價值的股票給Kawhi

(Kawhi的爛約是他簽的)

4. Kawhi的代言合約被視為溢價爛約(跟他的NBA合約一樣 沒) 但是如果他都沒做事
Aspiration一直都可以不給錢 所以並不是Torre說的不用做事的合約 而是Aspiration方
根本不知道要怎麼透過Leonard打廣告

5. 那個被Aspiration騙然後是受害人的很有可能真的就是Ballmer 那50M被視為罪款

6. 維持Ballmer/Kawhi的關係很有可能是要騙Ballmer更多的錢(也的確騙到了)

7. 合約不是舅舅Uncle Dennis Robertson獨立簽的 Kawhi的經紀人清楚知道這張合約的存
在

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※ 作者: EZ78 2025-09-13 06:48:59
※ 文章代碼(AID): #1enADTYV (NBA)
※ 文章網址: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/NBA/M.1757717341.A.89F.html