Kawhi Leonard landed $18 million in endorsements after Clippers made introductions

The NBA’s case against the Clippers becomes a little easier to understand when you follow the money.

According to the 36-page report from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker connected Kawhi Leonard‘s then-business manager, Dennis Robertson, with three companies during a six-day period in June 2020. Those companies were Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton.

By the end of August, Leonard had endorsement agreements with all three. By August 2021, he had received $18 million from them, according to the report.

Here’s where things get interesting. As Luke Adams of Hoops Rumors detailed, all three companies also reached agreements to do business with the Clippers within weeks of Zucker’s introductions. Each entered into a multimillion-dollar consulting agreement with the team either before or on the same day Leonard’s endorsement agreement was finalized.

Investigators called the endorsement arrangements “highly unusual,” noting that they came during the COVID-19 pandemic, required Leonard to perform little or no actual endorsement work and dwarfed previous athlete deals made by the companies.

Daktronics, which eventually manufactured the Halo Board at Intuit Dome, apparently had another concern. Investigators found the company believed that failing to establish a commercial relationship with Leonard could jeopardize its chances of winning the Intuit Dome bid.

None of that by itself explains every aspect of the NBA’s ruling. But it certainly helps explain why the league wasn’t buying the idea that these were just ordinary endorsement deals.