I spent the last hour listening to Mark Cuban cosplaying as Lionel Hutz—sweating through his suit and accidentally dropping his brown-bagged lunch on the floor when he opened his briefcase—running defense for Steve Ballmer after Pablo Torre Found Out the Clippers circumvented the NBA salary cap to keep Kawhi Leonard on the team.
Steve Ballmer worked with a Ponzi to sneak Kawhi extra cash via a faux-sponsorship.
According to Pablo Torre’s investigation—Kawhi Leonard signed a “sponsorship” deal with a company named Aspiration, worth around $50 million.
Coincidentally, Steve Ballmer invested $50 million in this company.
Interesting.
Aspiration was essentially just a money laundering operation hiding behind the guise of “planting trees” and saving the environment—when in reality, they were just taking in millions upon millions of investments and wiring that shit directly into their own pockets.
But not all of the money went into their pockets.
Some of the money went to celebrities like Robert Downey Jr.—who publicly promoted the company on social media.
Much like Sam Bankman-Fried with his FTX crypto scheme—Aspiration celebrity-washed their scam—using the social equity of our favs to feign legitimacy for their bullshit.
You know what other celebrity was paid by Aspiration?
Kawhi Leonard.
Except Kawhi didn’t even have to promote a damn thing.
Pablo Torre revealed Kawhi’s contract with Aspiration didn’t require him to do anything—except play for the Los Angeles Clippers.
All the pieces fit together.
Kawhi Leonard wanted a contract extension. S
teve Ballmer gave Aspiration $50 million.
Aspiration sent that money back to Kawhi in a secret contract so Kawhi could receive extra money outside of the NBA salary cap.
It’s honestly pretty cut and dry.
The Mark Cuban defense
Mark Cuban didn’t appreciate Pablo Torre’s insinuations of wrongdoing—so he joined the podcast to debate the merits of the claims.
For a little over an hour, Cuban defended his fellow billionaire against any and all accountability—with the finesse, subtlety and grace of a rhinosaurus on roller skates.
From Cuban’s lens—Steve Ballmer is FAAAAAR too smart to cheat the NBA salary cap—while simultaneously being FAAAAAR too dumb to recognize Aspiration as a phony Ponzi scheme.
To Mark—Ballmer is both too brilliant and ethical to get his hands dirty in Kawhi’s no-show job with Aspiration—and too dumb and naive not to involve himself with Aspiration in the first place.
Even though Pablo Torre heard from several employees at Aspiration that the CEOs directly told them they were paying Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the NBA salary cap for Steve Ballmer—Mark Cuban believes Ballmer is a law abiding citizen who simply paid $50 million for a pallet for a snakeoil.
He even went as far as blaming Kawhi’s Uncle Dennis for the whole fiasco.
Uncle Dennis was instrumental in Kawhi signing with the Clippers in 2019.
The NBA had to change its rules to ensure only agents could broker deals for players after a summer in which Uncle Dennis asked the Lakers for cars and ownership stakes and probably Omaha Steaks too.
Just keep in mind what’s happening here.
Mark Cuban, a billionaire, is diving on a live grenade to save Steve Ballmer, a billionaire—by claiming Kawhi’s uncle is some shady, unpredictable, greey figure.
Uncle Dennis has 30+ years of banking and marketing experience.
You wouldn’t know that if you heard Mark Cuban throw him under the bus like he’s the drunk uncle slurring his words on the stoop—spilling Hennessy all over his FUBU gear while he brags about the “good ol days”.
Uncle Dennis is financial professional and these old, rich, white guys want you to believe he’s an overbearing, jobless, jive-talking hoodrat.
Steve Ballmer is a victim
Steve Ballmer has been using ESPN’s Ramona Shelbourne to help tell his story as the helpless billionaire who was taken advantage of by powers out of his control.
Steve Ballmer on Aspiration:
“They conned me” pic.twitter.com/vYnTMd9yhs
— SleeperClippers (@SleeperClippers) September 5, 2025
Steve Ballmer puts all the onus on Aspiration—claiming he didn’t see any contracts or documents between them and Kawhi—despite Pablo reporting, again, sooo many people within the company were told directly that Steve Ballmer was 1000% aware of the arrangement.
According to Ballmer—he not only gave $50 million to this company—but also had their logo on the Clippers jersey—but he didn’t do the due diligence to even see how their business worked.
I’m sure Steve was just taken for a ride and there was no quid pro quo in their relationship.
Anyway, here is an unrelated story about Steve Ballmer cheating to make a local high school basketball program better:
An elite private school with an endowment of $190 million, Lakeside was better known for its academics, chess team and being the place where Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen began their alliance as students in the late 1960s.
Ballmer, however, was a basketball zealot who had been angling to own an NBA franchise, a goal finalized just last week with his $2 billion purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers. Before he had a pro team to call his own — and with all three of his kids involved with basketball at Lakeside — Ballmer focused his attention on the high-school team.
Ballmer and his allies at Lakeside attracted basketball talent to the wealthy school and aided them with a series of questionable tactics that included a new basketball-focused nonprofit, cash for a coach, an unusual admissions process and weak enforcement of academic standards. One star player stayed at a $6 million mansion as he shuffled through three years of an academic schedule that almost ensured he wouldn’t get a Lakeside diploma.
“They relaxed their academic integrity to accommodate athletes,” said Dana Papasedero, who coached baseball at Lakeside for two decades.
The tactics may have violated Washington state’s prep-sports rules, according to a Seattle Times investigation. But it all paid off: In just five years, Lakeside went from winless in its district to district champs for the first time in a quarter century. (Seattle Times)
Steve Ballmer would NEVER cheat to win basketball games.
Oh, except that time he cheated to win basketball games.
Kawhi is the GOAT
Kawhi Leonard has been one of my favorite NBA players ever since he won that Finals MVP with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014.
We’ve seen out-of-this-world scorers like Carmelo Anthony—or Kevin Durant—or Steph Curry—or James Harden.
But rarely do we witness a player capable of dictating everything that happens on the court over a string of consecutive possessions the way Kawhi can.
At any point in a ball game—Kawhi can control what happens on the offensive side of the court AND the defensive with arms that extend like Reed Richards and hands the size of hot air balloons—Kawhi can clamp a ball-handler or jump a passing lane—leading to an easy fastbreak.
And in the playoffs, we’ve seen him do exactly that—over and over again—singlehandedly winning games with his own mini 10-0 runs.
But what I love most about Kawhi is his insistence on only working when he feels like it.
As someone who has quit (or been fired) from almost every job I’ve ever had—Kawhi is my hero.
Kawhi doesn’t play basketball unless he is physically, mentally and emotionally ready—and not a fucking moment before.
All Kawhi had to do was plant one single tree and this story loses its teeth.
And he couldn’t do it.
Because he didn’t want to.
Because he didn’t have to.
Kawhi Leonard is the PTO god.
He’s the king of sick days.
Some superstars have that lame “no days off” mentality.
That shit that sounds good in Gatorade commercials or whatever.
Not Kawhi.
He and I share a similar, “as many days off as possible” lifestyle.
I guess I say all that to say—if any of these scam companies want to throw me a few million dollars to do nothing for them—my contact info is below.
Hit me up.
I promise not to work for you.
It’s a guarantee.
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Thanks for reading.
Let me know if you think Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard are innocent. Leave a comment below. Respond on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee9
