Pablo Torre, Mark Cuban, Others React After Nba Punishes The Clippers And Kawhi Leonard In Sponsorship Scandal

The NBA came down on Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers hard on Wednesday afternoon. 

The league announced that it had stripped the Clippers of five first-round draft picks and fined Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, among other things, after it had determined that the team circumvented the salary cap rules. 

Journalist Pablo Torre, who first unveiled the possible violations on his "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast and has been covering developments of the scandal every step of the way, was quick to take to social media after the ruling was announced. He responded with just a single emoji.

Torre has alleged that there were at least two lucrative no-show sponsorship deals that companies struck with Leonard. The first was involving the now-defunct sustainability company Aspiration, which reportedly paid Leonard millions for no visible work. The second allegedly involved scoreboard company Daktronics, which is a business-to-business company with no history of celebrity sponsorship deals. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating Daktronics now, too.

All of this, Torre alleged, was done in an effort to circumvent the NBA's salary-cap rules after he signed with the team in 2019. 

The NBA handed down several punishments on Wednesday. The league stripped the Clippers of five future first-round draft picks, one in every draft from 2029 to 2033. Ballmer was fined $30 million and suspended. Clippers president Lawrence Frank and president of business operations Gillian Zucker were suspended, too. Leonard was also hit with a $700,000 fine. 

The Clippers said in a statement that they "vehemently reject the NBA's findings," and called the investigation "heavily biased."

It was the scope of the punishment that left many stunned, and sent people rushing to compare it to what other leagues have done.

There were also plenty of jokes to be made, especially since Leonard was told he had to pay $700,000. The deal to send him to the Toronto Raptors will now seemingly be allowed to go through.

Perhaps the best reaction was from former Dallas Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban, who had sparred with Torre on both social media and on his podcast over the issue and repeatedly defended Ballmer.

Torre's reporting, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, ended up being accurate. Cuban's sentiment was one many shared.