NBA

Retired NBA player and former Harvard-Westlake star Jason Collins is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, the NBA said Thursday in a statement released on behalf of Collins and his family.

“Jason and his family welcome your support and prayers and kindly ask for privacy as they dedicate their attention to Jason’s health and well-being,” the league said.

A 46-year-old native of Northridge, Jason Collins and twin brother, Jarron, led Harvard-Westlake to state Division III titles in 1996 and 1997, with the former being named the state Division III player of the year both seasons. His 1,500 career rebounds stood as a CIF state record until 2010, when Hemet West Valley’s Joe Burton finished his career with 1,721 rebounds.

Collins made first-team All-Pac-10 during his senior year at Stanford. He was selected 18th overall in the 2001 draft by the Houston Rockets and traded on draft night to the New Jersey Nets.

Averaging 3.6 points and 3.7 rebounds during his 13-year NBA career, Collins also played for the Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards.

He was unsigned in April 2013 when he came out as gay in an open letter published in Sports Illustrated.

Signed by the Brooklyn Nets several months later, Collins became the first active NBA player to have come out as gay when the Nets played the Lakers on Feb. 23, 2014. He retired at the end of that season and has continued working with the league as an NBA Cares ambassador.

Collins and longtime partner Brunson Green were married in May.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Wednesday pulled back the reins as allegations swirled about the Clippers circumventing the salary cap by orchestrating an endorsement deal for star forward Kawhi Leonard.

Silver, speaking to the media after a previously scheduled meeting of all 30 team owners in New York, said an NBA investigation would need to uncover clear evidence that the Clippers violated rules for owner Steve Ballmer to be punished.

“The burden is on the league if we are going to discipline a team, an owner, a player or any constituent members of the league,” Silver said. “I think, as with any process that requires a fundamental sense of fairness, the burden should be on the party that is, in essence, bringing those charges. …

“I think as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety.”

The Clippers and Ballmer are under league investigation after it was alleged last week on the podcast of Pablo Torre that Leonard was paid $28 million for a do-nothing endorsement role by Aspiration, a sustainability firm that had agreed to a $330-million sponsorship deal with the Clippers and had offered $1 billion for naming rights to the arena that instead became the Intuit Dome.

Aspiration turned out to be a fraudulent company, and co-founder Joseph Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding multiple investors and lenders.

Silver said he would hesitate to take action against the Clippers if even a shred of doubt about the situation remains following the investigation, which will be conducted by a law firm experienced in probing wrongdoing by sports franchises, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz.

“Bringing in a firm that specializes in internal investigations adds a level of expertise and creates separation between the league and the investigation of a team,” said Michael McCann, a sports law expert and a visiting professor at Harvard. “The investigators have a background in prosecutorial work, insight into what documents to request and questions to ask.”

McCann and other legal experts said the investigation would center on whether Ballmer’s $50-million investment into Aspiration was a quid pro quo for the firm to turn around and give Leonard $28 million in cash and $20 million in Aspiration stock to essentially do nothing.

Ballmer is embarrassed by the allegations and about his apparent infatuation with Aspiration — which entered into a $330-million sponsorship arrangement with the Clippers and was nearly awarded naming rights to what became the Intuit Dome, only to be revealed as a fraudulent company run by scam artists.

McCann said the investigation would need to uncover concrete evidence that Ballmer or someone else representing the Clippers directed Aspiration to make the deal with Leonard. The only evidence presented on Torre’s podcast was hearsay — an audio clip of an anonymous former Aspiration employee saying that someone else in the company told them the endorsement deal “was to circumvent the salary cap, LOL. There was lots of LOL when things were shared.”

LOL typically is used in written communication, so if the allegation was made in an email or text, the next step for investigators would be to interview the person who wrote it and determine whether Ballmer was involved.

The investigation presumably will examine all of this. Silver tends to be methodical when conducting a probe and is expected to act on what can be proved, not on the perception of wrongdoing. But he also is charged with protecting and growing franchise values. Anything that could damage the integrity of the league would be a huge concern to him and team owners.

“Silver has quite a few very interesting relationships to protect and to nurture: other owners, his corporate sponsors, the media networks that are distributing the content,” said David Carter, a USC professor of sports business and principal of the Sports Business Group. “Everybody attached to the league is interested in getting to the bottom of this. So he has to balance different stakeholder interests and he is very good at doing that.

“So I have a feeling he will — working with the law firm — get to the bottom of it and then decide to what extent if any punishment is warranted. He’ll do that with the intent of making sure he’s protecting the interests of the other owners.”

Leonard joined the Clippers in July 2019 on a three-year, $103-million contract after leading the Toronto Raptors to the NBA title. The 6-foot-7 forward from Moreno Valley signed a four-year, $176.3-million extension in 2021, when Aspiration made its sponsorship deal with the Clippers and Ballmer invested and became a minority owner in the company.

After signing a three-year, $153-million extension a year ago, Leonard will have been paid or is under contract for $375 million in career salary over 14 years with three teams.

The NBA looked into allegations that the Clippers paid Leonard or his representative and uncle, Dennis Robertson, a side deal when he first joined the team in 2019. No wrongdoing was found, although this week the Toronto Star reported that Robertson made demands of the Raptors in 2019 “that line up almost perfectly with what Leonard reportedly got from Aspiration.”

The Star reported that Robertson demanded $10 million a year in sponsorship income but that Leonard didn’t want to do anything for the money. The Raptors rejected the demand, and Leonard signed with the Clippers.

Should the Clippers be found guilty of circumventing the salary cap, they could be forced to forfeit draft picks and be fined heavily. Ballmer and other team executives could be suspended, and perhaps Leonard’s contract could be voided.

Silver will proceed carefully.

“The goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety,” he said. “In a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false. I’d want anyone else in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in now, or Kawhi Leonard for that matter, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me.”

NEW YORK — The NBA will not rush to any judgment in its probe of whether a business relationship between Kawhi Leonard and a California company was legitimate or merely a way for the Clippers to circumvent salary cap rules, Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday.

Silver spoke after a board of governors meeting in New York — one that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer attended — and said the league will wait to see the report from the outside firm it has hired to run its investigation before taking next steps.

“We’re constantly learning in the league office and again, I’m reserving judgment because I don’t know the facts here,” Silver said. “I don’t know what Kawhi was paid. I don’t know what he did or didn’t do. We’ll leave all that for the investigation.”

The NBA opened its investigation last week into whether a $28 million endorsement contract between Leonard and sustainability services company Aspiration Fund Adviser, LLC — one that filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — broke league rules, following a report by journalist Pablo Torre.

The Clippers have strongly denied that any rules were broken and said they welcomed the league’s investigation.

“I think as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was a mere appearance of impropriety,” Silver said. “I think the goal of a full investigation is to find if there really was impropriety. … I would want anybody else in the situation that Mr. Ballmer is in now or Kawhi Leonard for that matter, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me.”

Ballmer made a $50-million investment in Aspiration, and the company and the team announced a $300-million partnership in September 2021. That was about a month after Leonard signed a four-year, $176-million extension with the Clippers.

The team ended its relationship with Aspiration after two years, saying the contract was in default. Aspiration’s co-founder, Joseph Sanberg, agreed to plead guilty last month after facing federal charges of wire fraud. Prosecutors said he defrauded investors and lenders out of $248 million, adding that “Aspiration’s financial statements were inaccurate and reflected much higher revenue than the company in fact received.”

The league — which previously looked into claims that Leonard’s representatives asked for certain things that would be considered cap circumventions when he was a free agent several years ago — can issue stiff penalties if cap rules are found to have been broken by a team, including a fine of up to $7.5 million, the voiding of contracts and the forfeiture of future draft picks.

“I’m a big believer in due process and fairness and you need to now let the investigation run its course,” Silver said, adding that he has “very broad powers” when determining penalties if wrongdoing is found.

More details are emerging about a company that allegedly paid Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard millions to circumvent the NBA’s salary cap, including that the team came close in 2021 to granting naming rights for its Inglewood arena to Aspiration Partners.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer nearly granted naming rights to the company, but ended up choosing financial services firm Intuit to grace the $2-billion venue, a source familiar with the matter said. Intuit, which has a $186-billion net worth and developed TurboTax, Credit Karma and QuickBooks, ended up paying a reported $500 million over 23 years for the naming rights.

Four years later, Aspiration, a sustainability firm that also generated and sold carbon credits, is out of business. Co-founder Joseph Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding multiple investors and lenders. Listed among creditors in Aspiration’s bankruptcy documents is Leonard, raising questions about whether his $28-million endorsement deal with the company skirted NBA salary cap rules.

One of the investors Sanberg defrauded was Ballmer, listed by Fortune magazine as the sixth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $157 billion. The Clippers owner invested $50 million in Aspiration, which in turn entered into a $330-million sponsorship agreement with the team.

This week, the Athletic reported allegations that Aspiration agreed to pay Leonard $28 million for a job with no responsibilities, in an effort to circumvent the NBA salary cap. Ballmer was interviewed Thursday night by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and denied involvement in Leonard’s deal with Aspiration, but the NBA has launched an investigation.

Ballmer said he was “conned” by the company and that the Clippers did not circumvent NBA salary cap rules, which the team was accused of doing in a podcast report by Pablo Torre of the Athletic.

A plane flies over the Intuit Dome in Inglewood.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Ballmer told Shelburne that Aspiration offered more than Intuit for dome naming rights, and a Clippers spokesman confirmed that account. However, Ballmer insisted that the Clippers did not violate NBA rules against skirting the salary cap, and the team had agreed to a contract extension with Leonard and the sponsorship deal with Aspiration before the player and the company met.

“We were done with Kawhi, we were done with Aspiration,” Ballmer said. “The deals were all locked and loaded. Then, they did request to be introduced to Kawhi, and under the rules, we can introduce our sponsors to our athletes. We just can’t be involved.”

The Clippers signed Leonard to a four-year, $176-million contract in August 2021 even though he was recovering from a partially torn ACL in his right knee that kept him sidelined the entire 2021-22 season. Ballmer said the sponsorship deal with Aspiration was completed in September 2021 and that the Clippers introduced Leonard to Aspiration two months later.

“As part of our cooperation with the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, we produced texts and emails,” Ballmer said. “It was part of the document production in their investigation. We even found the email that made the first introduction [between Aspiration and Leonard]. It was early in November.

“Where could any of this circumvention happened? It couldn’t have, it didn’t. The introduction got made and they were off to the races on their own. We weren’t involved.”

The Boston Sports Journal reported that Leonard did not appear in promotional material as other endorsers did because Aspiration executives “saw no brand synergy with Leonard and chose not to use his services. They instead preferred to partner with climate-focused influencers.”

Ballmer couldn’t explain why Leonard did no marketing or endorsement work for Aspiration, telling Shelburne that he never spoke with the player about his deal with the company.

“I don’t know why they did what they did and I don’t know how different it is, I really don’t,” he said. “And, frankly, any speculation would be crazy. These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up and they conned me. At this stage, I have no ability to predict why they did anything they did.”

The salary cap is a dollar amount that limits what teams can spend on player payroll. The purpose of the cap is to ensure parity, preventing the wealthiest teams from outspending smaller markets to acquire the best players.

Circumventing the cap by paying a player outside of his contract is strictly prohibited. Teams that exceed the cap must pay luxury tax penalties that grow increasingly severe. Revenues from the tax penalties are then distributed in part to smaller-market teams and in part to teams that do not exceed the salary cap.

The NBA said it will investigate the allegations laid out by Torre. Ballmer said he welcomes the probe. If allegations were made against a team other than the Clippers, “I’d want the league to investigate, to take it seriously,” he said.

“We know the rules, and if anything is not clear, we remind ourselves what the rules are. And we make it absolutely clear we will abide by those rules.”

The cap was implemented before the 1984-85 season at a mere $3.6 million. Ten years later, it was $15.9 million, and 10 years after that it had risen to $43.9 million. By the 2014-15 season it was $63.1 million.

The biggest spike came before the 2016-2017 season when it jumped to $94 million because of an influx of revenue from a new nine-year, $24-billion media rights deal with ESPN and TNT.

Salary cap rules negotiated between the NBA and the players’ union are spelled out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Proven incidents of teams circumventing the cap are few, with a violation by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 serving as the most egregious.

The Timberwolves made a secret agreement with free agent and former No. 1 overall draft pick Joe Smith, signing him to a succession of below-market one-year deals in order to enable the team to go over the cap with a huge contract ahead of the 2001-02 season.

The NBA voided his contract, fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, and stripped them of five first-round draft picks — two of which were later returned. Also, owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale were suspended.

Then-NBA commissioner David Stern told the Minnesota Star Tribune at the time: “What was done here was a fraud of major proportions. There were no fewer than five undisclosed contracts tightly tucked away, in the hope that they would never see the light of day. … The magnitude of this offense was shocking.”

According to Article 13 of the CBA, if the Clippers were found to have circumvented the cap, it would be a first offense punishable by a $4.5-million fine, the loss of one first-round draft pick, and voiding of Leonard’s contract. However, the Clippers don’t have a first-round pick until 2027.

At the heart of the uproar over allegations that Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers received millions in undisclosed payments from a tree-planting startup is a National Basketball Association rule that caps the the total annual payroll for teams.

According to a report by Pablo Torre of the Athletic, bankruptcy documents show that the tree-planting startup Aspiration Partners paid Leonard $21 million — and still owes him another $7 million — after agreeing to a $28 million contract for endorsement and marketing work at the company.

The report claims there is no evidence to show that Leonard did anything for Aspiration Partners, whose initial funding came in large part from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Torre alleges that the payment to Leonard was a way to skirt the NBA salary cap and pad his contract.

The Clippers have forcefully denied that they or Ballmer “circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration.”

Still, the NBA said it was launching an investigation into the matter.

The salary cap is a dollar amount that limits what teams can spend on player payroll. The number is determined based on a percentage of projected income for the upcoming year. In 2024-25, the salary cap was $140.6 million.

The purpose of the cap is to ensure parity, preventing the wealthiest teams from outspending smaller markets to acquire the best players. Teams that exceed the cap must pay luxury tax penalties that grow increasingly severe. Revenues from the tax penalties are then distributed in part to smaller-market teams and in part to teams that do not exceed the salary cap.

The cap was implemented before the 1984-85 season at a mere $3.6 million. Ten years later, it was $15.9 million, and 10 years after that it had risen to $43.9 million. By the 2014-15 season it was $63.1 million.

The biggest spike came before the 2016-2017 season when it jumped to $94 million because of an influx of revenue from a new nine-year, $24 billion media rights deal with ESPN and TNT.

Salary cap rules negotiated between the NBA and the players’ union are spelled out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). Proven incidents of teams circumventing the cap are few, with a violation by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 serving as the most egregious.

The Timberwolves made a secret agreement with free agent and former No. 1 overall draft pick Joe Smith, signing him to a succession of below-market one-year deals in order to enable the team to go over the cap with a huge contract ahead of the 2001-2002 season.

The NBA voided his contract, fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, and stripped them of five first-round draft picks — two of which were later returned. Also, owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale were suspended.

Then-NBA commissioner David Stern told the Minnesota Star-Tribune at the time: “What was done here was a fraud of major proportions. There were no fewer than five undisclosed contracts tightly tucked away, in the hope that they would never see the light of day. … The magnitude of this offense was shocking.”

Current commissioner Adam Silver is just as adamant as Stern when it comes to enforcing salary cap rules, although the current CBA limits punishment.

According to Article 13 of the CBA, if the Clippers were found to have circumvented the cap, it would be a first offense punishable by a $4.5 million fine, one first-round draft pick, and voiding of Leonard’s contract. However, the Clippers don’t have a first-round pick until 2027.

Leonard, one of the Clippers stars, is extremely well compensated. He will have been paid $375,772,011 by NBA teams through the upcoming season, according to industry expert spotrac.com.

A former Aspiration finance department employee whose voice was disguised on Torre’s podcast said that when they noticed the shockingly large fee paid to Leonard, they were told that, “If I had any questions about it, essentially don’t, because it was to circumvent the salary cap, LOL. There was lots of LOL when things were shared.”

Aspiration Partners was a digital bank that promoted socially responsible spending and investments that, at one point, brought in a star-filled roster of investors that included Drake, Robert Downey Jr., and Leonardo DiCaprio. Founded in 2013, it offered investments in “conscious coalition” companies and offered carbon credits to businesses. The company was valued it at $2.3 million at one point.

But in August, the company’s co-founder, Joseph Sanberg, agreed to plead guilty to charges that he defrauded investors and lenders. Federal prosecutors accused Sanberg of causing more than $248 million in losses, calling him a “fraudster.”

Prosecutors alleged that Sanberg and another member of the company’s board, Ibrahim AlHusseini, fraudulently obtained $145 million in loans by promising shares from Sanberg’s stock in the company. AlHusseini allegedly falsified records to inflate his assets to obtain the loans, and Sanberg concealed from investigators that he was the source for revenue that was recognized by the company.

Sanberg had also recruited companies and individuals to claim they would be paying tens of thousands of dollars to have trees planted, but instead Sanberg used legal entities under his control to hide that he was making these payments, not the customers.

Aspiration, which was partially funded by Ballmer with a $50 million investment, filed for bankruptcy in March.

The company was expected to pay more than $300 million over two decades as a sponsor for the Clippers’ Intuit Dome, which opened in August 2024. But before the new arena opened, the Clippers said Aspiration was no longer a sponsor, just as the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission began looking into allegations that Aspiration had misled customers and investors.

During Aspiration’s bankruptcy proceedings, documents emerged citing KL2 Aspire as a creditor owed $7 million, one of four yearly payments of that amount agreed upon in a 2022 contract. KL2 is a limited liability company that names Leonard — whose jersey number is 2 — as its manager.

Aspiration was partially funded by a $50-million investment from Ballmer. It is not known whether Ballmer was aware of or played a role in facilitating the employment agreement between Aspiration and Leonard.

The Clippers issued a lengthy statement Thursday, attempting to explain why Leonard being paid by Aspiration was unrelated to his contract with the Clippers.

“There is nothing unusual or untoward about team sponsors doing endorsement deals with players on the same team,” the statement said in part. “Neither Steve nor the Clippers organization had any oversight of Kawhi’s independent endorsement agreement with Aspiration. To say otherwise is flat-out wrong.”

“The Clippers take NBA compliance extremely seriously, fully respect the league’s rules, and welcome its investigation related to Aspiration.”

In his reporting, Torre noted that Leonard’s contract with Aspiration included an unusual clause that said the company could terminate the endorsement agreement if Leonard was no longer a member of the Clippers.

Mark Cuban, part owner of the Dallas Mavericks, took to X.com to suggest that Torre’s reporting was faulty.

‘I’m on Team Ballmer,” Cuban wrote. “As much as I wish they circumvented the salary cap, First Steve isn’t that dumb. If he did try to feed KL money, knowing what was at stake for him personally, and his team, do you think he would let the company go bankrupt ? “

Torre responded by inviting Cuban on his podcast, “Pablo Torre Finds Out.”

The NBA’s quest to “create an All-Star experience that we can be proud of and our players can be proud of” continues in earnest and with a new partner.

NBC joins the effort to inject life into what has become a moribund endeavor. Under the NBA’s new broadcast deal, the network will air the Feb. 15 game that will be hosted by the Clippers at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.

Silver and others in the know floated a trial balloon Wednesday evening, revealing that the 2026 All-Star Game is likely to be a round-robin tournament consisting of three eight-player teams — two comprised of U.S.-born players and one of players from other countries.

The NBA and the players’ union presented the format to the league’s competition committee on Wednesday and the response was positive, according to several media outlets.

Silver admitted that the convoluted format used this year “was a miss.” Three eight-man all-star squads and a fourth team of rookies and sophomores played a tournament of untimed games to a target score of 40 points.

Pitting U.S. All-Stars against those from other countries has long been an appealing concept to Silver. However, the league is about 70% American and 30% international, complicating a traditional one-game All-Star format. Creating two teams of eight U.S. all-stars and one team of eight from other countries would solve the numbers issue. The three teams would play each other in 12-minute quarter round-robin games.

The impetus to devise a new All-Star Game format escalated when the final score in 2024 was a ridiculous 211-186. There was no defense for a game in which nobody played any defense.

Asked about the lack of effort in preventing the other team from scoring, then-Lakers center Anthony Davis shrugged and said, “It’s an All-Star Game.”

The simple East-West format of that game was an effort to get away from the musical performances, prolonged introductions and rosters drafted by team captains that had plagued the event for years.

Silver was searching for a way to generate effort from the players and excitement from the crowd, saying before the game, “we’re not necessarily looking for players to go out there as if it’s the Finals, but we need players to play defense, we need them to care about this game. And the feeling was that maybe — and I’ll take responsibility for it; as you know, I used to run something called NBA Entertainment — that we’d gotten carried away a little bit with the entertainment aspect.”

A combined 397 points didn’t cut it, especially the part about playing defense. The format tried in March was a flop, with Silver admitting, “We’re a bit back to the drawing board.”

Should the competition committee green-light the new format, fans in L.A. will be able to decide in February whether the NBA has finally created an All-Star event that appeals to players enough for them to make an effort.

Television ratings might increase simply because the All-Star Game will be aired on NBC during the Milan Winter Olympics. The game will be played in the afternoon rather than the evening and is expected to be followed by NBC’s daily Olympics prime-time show from Milan.

“[The Olympics] present an enormous opportunity for us to do something with an international competition instead of the traditional All-Star formats that we’ve used,” Silver said last spring.

ESPN announced some changes Thursday for its NBA broadcast teams going into the 2025-26 season — among them, a promotion for Tim Legler and a contract extension (but also a demotion) for Doris Burke.

Legler will join the network’s lead NBA crew, which also includes play-by-play announcer Mike Breen, fellow analyst Richard Jefferson and reporter Lisa Salters.

That team will call the 2026 NBA Finals on ABC, as well as the conference finals, several first- and second-round playoff games, a Christmas Day game and NBA Saturday Primetime games on ABC.

Legler is a former NBA journeyman who won the league’s three-point shooting contest during the 1996 All-Star festivities. He retired as a player in 2000 and joined ESPN as an analyst the same year.

ESPN did not provide details on Burke’s contract extension, other than to say it is for multiple years. According to a press release, Burke will call “full slates of games throughout the regular season and the NBA playoffs” on ESPN and ABC with play-by-play announcer Dave Pasch.

Burke has been with ESPN since 1991 and joined the network’s lead NBA broadcast team in 2023. When she called the 2024 NBA Finals, she became the first woman to serve as a TV game analyst for a championship-round game in one of the four major professional U.S. men’s sports leagues.

In 2018, Burke received the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Media Award for outstanding contributions to basketball.

The news that Burke’s future with the lead NBA team was up in the air was first reported by The Athletic in June ahead of the 2025 Finals. Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle spoke in support of Burke during his news conference before Game 1.

“She’s changed the game for women in broadcasting,” Carlisle said. “Doris is a great example of courage and putting herself out there.”

Also on Thursday, ESPN announced a multi-year extension for Jefferson, who has been with the network since 2019 and called his first NBA Finals this year.