LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and the team are under investigation by the NBA following a report that Kawhi Leonard allegedly accepted a $28 million endorsement from a company called Aspiration as a way to circumvent the league’s salary cap.

Ballmer, who had previously invested $50 million in Aspiration, has denied he had knowledge of the deal or that he directed the company to strike one.

Here’s what we know about the now-defunct Aspiration at the center of the accusations.

What was Aspiration and who were its founders?

Harvard alumni Joe Sanberg, an entrepreneur, and Andrei Cherny, a lawyer who worked as a speechwriter for the Clinton administration, co-founded Aspiration Partners in 2013. The company’s mission was to provide “socially-conscious and sustainable banking services and investment products,” according to their archived website from 2019. Their slogan: “Do Well. Do Good.”

Sanberg served on Aspiration’s board of directors and held about 30% of its shares as of September 2021, according to court filings. He was also an early investor in start-ups including Blue Apron. Cherny was Aspiration’s chief executive officer for nearly a decade.

What was Aspiration’s business model?

Think of Aspiration as a digital bank, but environmentally conscious. According to its website, the company claimed to be unlike other banks because customer deposits would “never fund fossil fuel projects like pipelines, oil rigs and coalmines.”

The company’s products included savings accounts and debit cards with cash back from a select number of businesses who were “doing the right thing,” plus an option to plant a tree with every purchase roundup. The company also offered access to investment funds that are “100% fossil fuel free.”

Who were the big-name investors in Aspiration?

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that Aspiration drew backers including Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, Leonardo DiCaprio, now-Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers and Cindy Crawford and her daughter, Kaia Gerber.

Their corporate partners included the likes of Meta, Microsoft and eventually the LA Clippers.

How are Ballmer, Leonard and the LA Clippers connected to Aspiration?

Last week, podcaster and journalist Pablo Torre reported, citing internal documents, that Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration through his personal LLC on Sept. 14, 2021. Ballmer, one of the richest owners in sports and a philanthropist, is known to contribute to climate initiatives.

Also in September 2021, the LA Clippers signed a $300 million deal with Aspiration, making the company the “first founding partner” of the Intuit Dome. The multiyear partnership included a “Planet Protection Fund,” which would allow fans to “offset their own carbon impact whenever they purchase a ticket to cheer on the Clippers,” according to a statement about the partnership at the time.

“Aspiration becoming our first Founding Partner supports the stake we are planting in the ground to make Intuit Dome the most sustainable arena in the world,” Ballmer said in the statement.

In an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne last week, Ballmer said Aspiration asked him to introduce it to Leonard, which he said happened in November 2021.

According to Torre’s report, Leonard agreed to a four-year, $28 million endorsement deal from Aspiration through his LLC KL2 Aspire in April 2022, nine months after he re-signed with the Clippers. An unnamed employee who purportedly worked for Aspiration told Torre that the payment to Leonard “was to circumvent the salary cap.”

This week Torre, citing more documents, reported that Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong also invested nearly $2 million in Aspiration through a personal LLC in 2022, nine days before Leonard was paid $1.75 million by the company.

According to a report in The Athletic on Friday, which cited legal documents, Ballmer invested an additional $10 million into Aspiration in March 2023 in a funding round that included other previous company investors.

How is the NBA reacting?

The NBA is investigating whether Ballmer and the Clippers violated league rules. Commissioner Adam Silver, speaking at his annual news conference at the conclusion of the league’s board of governors meetings in New York this week, said that the “burden is on the league” to prove wrongdoing and that the league needs to look “at the totality of the evidence” rather than just “mere appearance.”

“Just by the way those words read, I think as a matter of fundamental fairness, I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety. … I think that the goal of a full investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety. Also, in a public-facing sport, the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false. I’d want anybody 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.”

Sources told ESPN that while there will be a thorough investigation of the matter by New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, there is no set deadline to find a conclusion.

What happened to Aspiration?

Cherny, co-founder and CEO, departed the company in 2022. In a statement posted on his X account Friday, Cherny said Leonard’s contract was not a “no-show” deal and had “three pages of extensive obligations.” He said he signed the contract in 2022 following “numerous internal conversations about the various things Aspiration was planning to do with Leonard.”

“I can’t speak to what was done or not done after I left — or why,” Cherney said in the statement.

When contacted by ESPN Friday, Cherny said that he had no further comment beyond the statement.

Aspiration filed for bankruptcy in March, with a reported debt of $170 million. When it filed for bankruptcy, the company said it owed the Clippers $30 million, the most out of all its creditors. Aspiration said at the time it owed Leonard’s LLC $7 million.

Last month, Aspiration co-founder Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud. Federal prosecutors said Sanberg defrauded investors and lenders out of $248 million by fraudulently obtaining loans, falsifying bank and brokerage statements and concealing that he was the source of some revenue booked by the company.

Each of the charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Ballmer told ESPN he was “embarrassed” that he didn’t detect trouble in reviewing Aspiration’s financial statements and business plans.

“These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. They conned me,” he said. “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 might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi.”

The NFL released a statement on Friday addressing a recent tribute to Charlie Kirk ahead of its most recent game, and said teams will be left to make their own decisions about whether to follow suit this Sunday. 

Thursday night’s game between the Green Bay Packers and Washington Commanders featured a moment of silence in honor of Kirk before kick-off. 

“Last night’s moment was the league’s decision. It’s up to the clubs for this Sunday’s games,” the league’s statement read, per multiple reports.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

The statement further addressed the context of the tribute, comparing it to other moments of silence following tragedies. 

“There have been moments following school shootings or an attack on a house of worship such as the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. There also have been moments following major international incidents such as Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and weather-related incidents such as major hurricanes and fires,” the statement continued. 

“This is in addition to honoring those in the NFL family from tributes to recently passed players or personnel, or a player such as Damar Hamlin in 2023. The NFL also honored before Super Bowl LIV NBA star Kobe Bryant and the other victims of the helicopter crash (Gianna Bryant, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, Ara Zobayan) and also Pro Football Hall of Famer Chris Doleman who passed that week.” 

The league made reference to sweeping changes to field and pre-game protocols following the death of George Floyd in 2020, and moments of silence following other tragedies in the past calendar year. 

TIMELINE OF CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATION 

“Lift Every Voice and Sing has been performed at league events since 2020 following the murder of George Floyd and the events of the summer of 2020, including last Thursday during the Kickoff game in Philadelphia. It is also performed before the Super Bowl,” the statement continued. 

“This summer before the Hall of Fame game in Canton, the league honored the victims and those impacted by the attack at 345 Park Avenue. During Week 18 games last season, the NFL honored the victims of the Bourbon Street terrorist attack. Also, that season the NFL held a moment to recognize those lost in the deadly crashes near Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia and also prior to the Vikings-Rams Wild Card game that was moved from LA to Arizona due to the wildfires.”

At least one NFL team has already made it a point to fire an employee who made insensitive comments after Kirk’s assassination. 

The Carolina Panthers fired Charlie Rock, a member of the team’s communications department, after social media posts linked to Rock appeared to show him questioning why people were sad that Kirk had been shot and killed. 

“The views expressed by our employees are their own and do not represent those of the Carolina Panthers,” the team said in a statement posted to social media. “We do not condone violence of any kind. We are taking this matter very seriously and have accordingly addressed it with the individual.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Elsewhere in American sports, the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs each held a moment of silence ahead of recent games to honor Kirk following the assassination on Wednesday. Meanwhile, MLB has instructed all teams to, at the very least, keep all American flags at half-staff throughout the weekend in honor of Kirk. 

“MLB asked all of the Clubs to follow the direction of the White House Presidential Proclamation and fly flags at half-staff in their ballparks,” an MLB spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

The NHL, NBA and WNBA have made no official statements addressing Kirk’s assassination. Fox News Digital has reached out to all three leagues to ask if they would, but has not received a response. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

We are back!

The international break is finally over, and with it comes a weekend packed with mouthwatering matchups across Europe.

We kick things off in the Premier League, where Nottingham Forest — now under new manager Ange Postecoglou after the sacking of Nuno Espírito Santo — travel to face Arsenal. We also have some other great matches which include Newcastle United, now without striker Alexander Isak, taking on Wolverhampton Wanderers, and a London derby between West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur.

In LaLiga, Real Sociedad take on Real Madrid, in the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich meet Hamburg, while Serie A delivers one of the biggest games of the season: the Derby d’Italia, as Weston McKennie‘s Juventus face Internazionale.

Stay tuned for all the highlights and big moments from an action-packed day in Europe.