New Report Shows Clippers Minority Owner’s Alleged Involvement in Kawhi Leonard Deal

There's an interesting new wrinkle in Pablo Torre's tell-all report on the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard.

Torre shared new details from his report based on recent documents he obtained that potentially implicates Clippers minority owner Dennis J. Wong in Leonard's endorsement deal with Aspiration, which paid the star millions while "circumventing the NBA salary cap," as Torre reported earlier.

The new documents reveal that Wong, who owns 1% of the Clippers and was Steve Ballmer's college roommate, made a roughly $2 million investment in Aspiration, the fraudulent environmental start-up that sponsored Leonard. Wong reportedly made this investment on Dec. 6, 2022, when it was already clear that Aspiration was running out of money, per Torre.

On Dec. 15, Leonard was paid $1.75 million by Aspiration through his endorsement deal. That same day, the company laid of 20% of its employees.

EXCLUSIVE: Kawhi Leonard's $1.75M "no-show" payday was running late.

Then, per new documents obtained by @PabloTorre, the Clippers' co-owner invested $1.99M in the team's broke sponsor.

Nine days later, Kawhi got paid.

"It is beyond shocking," an Aspiration executive says. pic.twitter.com/yxOYGfo3dZ
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 11, 2025

"It is beyond shocking, and I will tell you, I knew that the board (of directors at Aspiration) had put (in) money in December to make payroll and make rent… (so) it is not a rational investment that someone (Wong) would make," a former Aspiration employee said on Torre's podcast. "So it is very shocking to me that $2 million was made as an investment by Dennis Wong, who in my texts is identified as … Steve Ballmer’s partner a week before $1.75 million was paid to Kawhi."

Leonard's deal with Aspiration was a four-year, $28 million contract that began in April 2022. Leonard was to be paid $7 million per year, via quarterly payments of $1.75 million, according to Torre. Those payments to Leonard were marked as "critical." After Aspiration failed to wire a payment to Leonard in the fall of '22, per the obtained documents, Wong invested the roughly $2 million in Aspiration that was then funneled to Leonard.

Why would Wong have sunk a sizable chunk of money in a company that was on the fast track to bankruptcy? That's what Torre wants to find out. Torre reached out to the Clippers and Wong for comment, but they declined to respond.

The Clippers did, however, issue a revised statement to Torre:

"The details of our relationship with Aspiration are under NBA investigation, but it is clear the company was a house of cards that defrauded Steve and many others. We look forward to sharing the facts with the league and providing them with all the information they need."