Steve Ballmer got suspended by the NBA because of a podcast and a jumbotron corruption scandal

BREAKING: The NBA suspends Clippers owner Steve Ballmer for one year over a $28 million sham endorsement deal for Kawhi Leonard, with the team forfeiting five draft picks and paying a $30 million fine.

Steve Ballmer just got suspended from his own team for a year.

The NBA hit the Clippers owner, that's him, the former Microsoft boss worth a quarter trillion, over a twenty eight million dollar endorsement deal for Kawhi Leonard that involved no actual endorsing. Kawhi is here, he's taken a seven hundred thousand dollar fine and his business manager is banned. The team forfeits five future draft picks and pays thirty million dollars on top.

And the whole thing started with a podcast. Pablo Torre dug it up, the league hired a law firm, and the thirty five page report says Ballmer's denials were inaccurate at best. His business operations president Gillian Zucker got a year too, her claims were called clearly false. This is the arena Ballmer built for two billion dollars, and he's now not allowed to run it.

The Clippers are writing angry letters calling the investigation biased. Ballmer paid two billion for the team. One podcast just cost him a year of it.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.