Kawhi Leonard reportedly had deal with Daktronics, Clippers’ video board manufacturer
The Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, who are currently under investigation for potential salary cap violations related to payments outside of the league’s salary cap, also received millions in a second questionable sponsorship deal, multiple sources told the podcast, “Pablo Torre Finds Out.”
Leonard had a second previously unknown sponsorship deal with Daktronics, the company that manufactured the Intuit Dome’s Halo video screen and others in the sports world, according to reporting released by the podcast.
The Clippers have been under investigation by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, with a focus on a $28 million endorsement deal given to Leonard by Aspiration, a former Clippers sponsor, since September. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has maintained that he was defrauded by Aspiration, a carbon-credit company he invested in.
Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanburg was sentenced to 14 years for fraud this past June.
Torre’s latest podcast, released Thursday night, cites multiple anonymous sources from inside the Clippers and the Intuit Dome project who said that Leonard’s was a Clippers spokesperson for Daktronics. It’s unclear when the contract began and ended. One anonymous source told Torre that the contract was for “millions of dollars.” The company has no other celebrity endorsement deals that have been made public.
When the podcast asked the company to confirm if Leonard had an endorsement deal, it referred them to a spokesperson for a crisis management firm who said, “My understanding is Daktronics doesn’t have a deal with Kawhi right now.” When asked for clarification, the spokesman said, “I don’t know what the company wants to say, or can say, given the Wachtell investigation and all that.