Aspiration co-founder Andrei Cherny says Kawhi Leonard’s $28 million endorsement deal was NOT “no-show”; Pablo Torre disagrees | NBA News
Pablo Torre is not willing to just sit this one out after his initial investigative report implicated the Los Angeles Clippers of salary cap circumventing. It was alleged that the Clippers were paying Kawhi Leonard an extra $28 million through a third party – a fraudulent company named Aspiration. But the team and its owner, Steve Ballmer, have repeatedly denied any such wrongdoing on their part. Recently, Aspiration co-founder, Andrei Cherny, said that the endorsement deal the company signed with Leonard was not “no-show.” But Torre has once again produced a document that would somewhat disagree with that statement.
Aspiration co-founder Andrei Cherny makes a statement about the Kawhi Leonard deal
Andrei Cherny, who cofounded the fraudulent company, Aspiration, alongside Joe Sanberg, has since made a statement about the ongoing drama regarding his company, the Los Angeles Clippers, and their star player, Kawhi Leonard. Sanberg was arrested on fraud charges earlier this year, while Cherny is being investigated by the US Dept. of Justice.Cherny took his stance on the matter by making his statement to the New York Times/The Athletic, which he also posted on his X (formerly Twitter). He said that Leonard’s endorsement deal was a contract containing “three pages of extensive obligations that Leonard had to perform.” The statement also said that if Leonard was unable to “meet those obligations,” the company had the authority to “terminate the contract.”Unfortunately, for Cherny, the biggest plothole in the statement, and what everyone who has been following the drama has been talking about since the beginning, is that Leonard has never even uttered the term Aspiration in the whole time that he has been employed by them. In fact, he is the celebrity with the highest salary in their payroll, allegedly even outdoing stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Leonardo DiCaprio, who have actually worked for the company, unlike the Clippers star. So the statement he made does not make much sense on why they did not in fact terminate the contract if the player was not even doing any work for them.
Pablo Torre submits a signed document from Aspiration’s former executives
Since the statement made by Aspiration co-founder Andrei Cherny, Pablo Torre made a post on X, where he pointed out the fact that he had, in fact, requested an interview from him, which was denied. Cherny said in his statement that “no reporter has bothered to reach out to me for the facts about that contract,” but according to Torre he had “e-mailed you a series of detailed questions,” but Cherny allegedly lost the email in his spam filter. Next, Pablo produced a signed document from former executives of Aspiration, who in a joint statement have said that the Kawhi Leonard deal was arranged and executed by Cherny, despite “significant objections from members of their senior management team.”But the deal went through anyway, even though it did not reflect any of their ideas or justify their strategy – then and now. The drama has taken the form of a giant storm, and the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard are right in the middle of it, with every day bringing new information to the fold.Also Read: Uncle Dennis was furious – Aspiration being late in paying Kawhi Leonard led to Los Angeles Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong’s investment
