Why Draymond is happy Kawhi Leonard didn't get suspended for Clippers scandal originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Draymond Green has strong opinions on how the NBA handled its biggest offseason scandal — and he’s genuinely relieved about how it turned out for Kawhi Leonard.
The NBA announced severe penalties against the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday following a nearly yearlong investigation into salary cap circumvention involving Leonard. The league found the organization had improperly facilitated off-court endorsement deals between Leonard and four companies doing business with the team — Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance — most notably a $28 million “no-show job” deal with Aspiration, a sustainability startup that has since collapsed into bankruptcy amid federal fraud charges against its co-founder.
The Clippers were fined $30 million, the largest penalty in NBA history, and will forfeit five first-round draft picks from 2029 through 2033. Owner Steve Ballmer was suspended one year from all league and team activities for “knowingly” helping Leonard pursue those opportunities. In contrast, team president Gillian Zucker was suspended a year without pay, and basketball operations president Lawrence Frank was suspended six months. Leonard himself was ordered to pay $700,000 for violations tied to the conduct of his business manager — his uncle, Dennis Robertson — but was not suspended.
That last detail is what Green focused on during Friday’s episode of “The Draymond Green Show.”
“Kawhi Leonard has to pay $700,000, essentially in restitution for what happened in the deal,” Green said. “And Kawhi came out and said, ‘I didn’t know anything about this,’ and I’m taking his word for it.”
Green’s reasoning centered specifically on Daktronics — one of the four companies actually named in the investigation, and a business whose scoreboards appear in arenas across the league.
“Daktronics is a real company,” Green said. “If you got a deal coming in from Daktronics, you’re not running to your representation like, ‘How do I get this?’ I know that’s a very reputable company. Looking in any arena, they’re probably doing the scoreboard. I’m taking Kawhi’s word for what it is, and I’m happy the team got the bulk of the penalty and not Kawhi.”
Green then widened his critique to the league’s broader compensation structure.
“Why is there a salary cap? Why are guys being prevented from making money from team sponsors or league sponsors?” Green said. “We talk about being in a league that’s player-centric, player-focused, player-driven – and here’s a situation where a guy can make 20 to 30 extra million dollars, and we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re in trouble.’ I’m happy Kawhi didn’t get the bulk of this punishment. I think that is absolutely beautiful.”
Green’s broader point about the salary cap is a conversation the league will keep having. But it’s worth separating that debate from what actually triggered this investigation. This was not a story about restrictive policy preventing players from earning outside income — it was a franchise found to have orchestrated a scheme through a company that turned out to be fraudulent, run by a co-founder now serving 14 years in federal prison for defrauding investors of more than $248 million.
Whether Leonard genuinely did not know of any of it, as Green believes, might be true. But the system that got exploited here wasn’t an unfair cap on player earnings — it was a rule meant to keep 30 different ownership groups playing by the same terms, and one team found a way around it.
