Submission + - NBA Suspends Steve Ballmer for 1 Year, Fines Clippers $30M for Salary-Cap Scheme
"Central to what the NBA identified as a salary-cap evasion scheme was Aspiration, a green-banking tech startup that filed for bankruptcy after its co-founder pleaded guilty to a $248 million fraud. Shortly after signing Leonard to a $176 million contract extension in 2021, Ballmer personally poured $50 million into Aspiration, while the team landed a $300 million sponsorship deal and Leonard secured a multimillion-dollar endorsement contract with the firm."
Given today's events, looking prescient in retrospect is a 2014 Deadspin item that quipped, Steve Ballmer Practiced Being Owner With His Son's High School Team, which took note of a Seattle Times investigation into "incoming Clippers owner Steve Ballmer's foray into the shady world of high school prep sports and the wealthy parents living vicariously through their kids." Summarizing Ballmer's aggressive find-a-way-to-win maneuvers, Deadspin wrote, "Ballmer's son's basketball team at Lakeside School in Seattle [which Bill Gates once attended] sucked, and he wanted to make it un-suck. So he created a non-profit as a way to pump money and talent into the school, got friendly faces coaching positions, and pushed for an administration-wide commitment to athletics at the expense of academics. He was basically the owner of Lakeside basketball."