NBA disputes report detailing potential findings in Clippers’ cap circumvention probe

{“@context”:”https://schema.org”,”@type”:”VideoObject”,”@id”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/video/cJGhGteaYXPm3Ey/”,”url”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/video/cJGhGteaYXPm3Ey/”,”name”:”Kawhi Leonard had a sponsorship with Clippers’ scoreboard operator”,”description”:”The deal was for Leonard to be a “spokesperson” for Daktronics and was for “multi-millions” of dollars, according to our reporting. “,”uploadDate”:”2026-08-07T03:33:06.482Z”,”duration”:”PT4M”,”thumbnailUrl”:”https://cdn-media.theathletic.com/video-stream/auto-thumbnail/cJGhGteaYXPm3Ey/5o4bp6cWouP3.0000000.jpg”,”contentUrl”:”https://video.nyt.com/athletic/streams/cJGhGteaYXPm3Ey/5o4bp6cWouP3/5o4bp6cWouP3.m3u8″,”transcript”:”This Is the approximately $100 million halo board. It is the double-sided oval shaped crown jewel of Steve Ballmer’s Intuito. You may not recall, I mean, how Dyronic’s fellow Clippers partner at the time, Aspiration. They got their name out by hiring celebrity spokespeople. Daktronics, by contrast, does not use public facing celebrity spokespeople or endorsers to promote the brand at all, apparently, and as one former Daktronics employee told us in a text message, I was told since it’s B2B and not a consumer product, it didn’t make sense to advertise that way. They’re the worldwide leader, arguably in jumbotron manufacturing, but this is where I do need you to know something else. And this is something that I initially heard on the phone from the first high-level source I’ve been talking to for the last 11 months. This was talked about just openly within the organization and from people working on the project, that Kawhi was a spokesperson for Daktronics. And it was just the biggest thing, it was just openly joked about within. People working on the project that knew about this, as it was 100% a way to circumvent the salary cap. And over months of vetting, the second high-level Clippers source, a former official, they also independently confirmed something else. Which is that this Kawhi deal was not only talked about by fellow higher-ups at the Clippers and Daktronics as a way to circumvent the NBA salary cap. Quote, I know Kawhi had a sponsorship with Daktronics, unquote. This second source was also told that Kawhi’s Daktronic sponsorship was a multi-million dollar deal, as my first source separately explained on tape. People at Electronics, people within the Clippers organization themselves, had told me about this multi-million dollar deal with Kawhi and Daktronics. They’re not a company that you would see a celebrity endorser for, you know, and then it wasn’t coming out of their end, that the Clippers were technically kind of funding it. You know, and that it was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi. You know how many teams they work with, how many stadiums, they had their pick of the litter, and they went with Kawhi Leonard, who then never does anything. They don’t even put out a press release. Look, in fairness, maybe Daktronics would claim that there were. Private secret things, you know, the things behind closed doors and Because of that possibility, late last month. Sam Koppelman of Hunter Brook Media reached out to Daktronics directly. I got an email from someone who seemed to be a PR person, a marketing person at Daktronics. He then writes back to say, you know what, I’m not gonna call you, but let me introduce you to our VP. But that person was actually the general counsel of Daktronics. As soon as I mentioned the name Kawhi Leonard, I didn’t hear back directly from Daktronics, but within 30 minutes, I got an email from someone. From the domain name GFbunting.com. And so for this crisis coms guy to call back and say, quote, my understanding is Daktronics doesn’t have a deal with Kawhi right now. Another possible answer, by the way, might have been, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s not the answer I got from these professional crisis com strategists. When I followed up on it, what he said was, quote, I don’t know what the company wants to say or can say, given the Wachtel investigation and all that. Do you know how locked in you have to be for the name Wachtel to come? I mean, not like the investigation or that Wachtel. He knew the name of the firm. Almost like you listen to podcasts about it.”,”ineligibleRegion”:[“BI”,”BY”,”CD”,”CF”,”CU”,”IQ”,”IR”,”KP”,”LB”,”LY”,”ML”,”NI”,”RU”,”SD”,”SO”,”SS”,”SY”,”UA”,”VE”,”YE”,”ZW”],”publisher”:{“@type”:”NewsMediaOrganization”,”@id”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/#publisher”,”name”:”The Athletic”,”url”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/”,”foundingDate”:”2016-01-25″,”logo”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”@id”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”url”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”contentUrl”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”creditText”:”The Athletic”,”height”:”60″,”width”:”435″},”publishingPrinciples”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/edit-guidelines/”,”sameAs”:”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Athletic”},”author”:[{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”The Athletic Staff”}]}