NBA
NBA 2026-27: the Ballmer case and a league redrawn
NBA 2026-27 · season opens 20 October
5
years without a first-round pick
The Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the salary cap and received the heaviest penalty the NBA has ever handed a club.
The new NBA season starts on 20 October, with three games on one night: Boston against Detroit, New York against Philadelphia and San Antonio against Oklahoma City. Before that night arrives, something else has to be settled.
The heaviest penalty ever handed to an owner
On 2 September the NBA handed the Los Angeles Clippers the heaviest sanction any club has received in the history of the league. The finding: the club circumvented the salary cap by routing money to Kawhi Leonard outside the game.
Suspension
1 year
Owner Steve Ballmer is barred from all club and league activity for a year. Gillian Zucker, president of business operations, the same; Lawrence Frank, president of basketball operations, six months.
Fine
$30m
The largest fine the NBA has ever handed a club. Kawhi Leonard himself has to repay 700,000 dollars and was not suspended.
Draft picks
5
The Clippers lose their first-round picks from 2029 through 2033. Five straight years without a first-rounder.
The structure ran through Aspiration, a fintech company that marketed itself as green. Shortly after Leonard signed a 176 million dollar extension in 2021, Steve Ballmer personally put 50 million into it. The Clippers signed a 300 million sponsorship with the same company. Leonard picked up a 28 million endorsement deal there, for work that investigators found was never done.
Aspiration filed for bankruptcy in March 2025; co-founder Joseph Sanberg pleaded guilty later that year in a 248 million dollar fraud case. The story did not come out through the league but through the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, which won the Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting for it in May. In September 2025 Ballmer was still calling the allegations absurd.
He considered suing his own league and dropped it on 13 September. He apologised, paid the fine and took responsibility for what he called the distraction and distress the matter caused. Lawyers gave him long odds anyway.
Why this is more than a fine
The salary cap is the agreement the whole NBA runs on. Every club has the same room, and that is what lets a small market beat a large one. Circumventing that cap with money outside the game does not only break a rule, it undercuts the premise the league is built on.
That explains how far the penalty goes. A 30 million fine means little to an owner with Ballmer's wealth. Five years without a first-round pick reaches the club well into the next decade, and that is exactly the point.
Leonard now plays in Toronto. On media day he kept it short: he thinks the best decision is to move forward and focus on his time as a Raptor. The Clippers got Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick back, plus picks in 2031 and 2033. Ingram then turned out to have a partially torn Achilles and misses the start of the season.
Where the stars ended up
Where everyone ended up in 2026
Philadelphia went furthest. Jaylen Brown arrived from Boston on 6 July, with Paul George and four picks going the other way. Three weeks later LeBron James signed there for two years and eight million, a veteran minimum in his twenty-fourth season. Alongside Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey there is now a roster that on paper has to compete immediately.
The caveat is just as clear. Embiid played 45 of a possible 94 games last season, and three players who all want the ball have to fit together. LeBron said on media day that he did not leave his family to lose in the second round.
Miami gave up a lot for Giannis Antetokounmpo: Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel'el Ware, Kasparas Jakučionis, the number 13 pick and first-rounders in 2031 and 2033. Against that, the team played almost a quarter of its offence in transition last season, the highest share in twenty-two years, and Antetokounmpo has produced 1.21 points per possession there over the past five years, against 1.13 for the rest of the league. That is a good match.
Who is supposed to win the title
The bookmakers put San Antonio and Oklahoma City level at the top. The Spurs lost last season's finals and have Victor Wembanyama, De'Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell, with Tobias Harris added. The Thunder won the title in 2025 and lost this year's conference finals at home in seven games to those same Spurs. Their core held, though Luguentz Dort, Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe left.
The defending champion sits below both. New York won the finals 4-1 against San Antonio, a first title since 1973. Jalen Brunson was Finals MVP on 32.6 points a game and put up 45 in the decisive one. In game four the Knicks erased a 29-point deficit, the largest comeback in finals history, and OG Anunoby won it with a tip-in at 1.2 seconds. An average of 20.6 million people watched, the highest since 1998.
What else changes
The NBA Cup takes a different shape. The semi-finals are played at the higher seed's arena for the first time instead of on neutral ground, and the final moves from Las Vegas to Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Six clubs start with a new head coach.
Tyrese Haliburton is back. He missed a full season after the Achilles injury in game seven of the 2025 finals and now says he plays without restrictions. Stephen Curry extended for two years at 116 million, twenty million less than he could have taken. Jalen Duren skipped Detroit's media day over his offer.
And four Dutch players sit at the edges of the league. Quinten Post signed with Memphis for three years and 30 million dollars after Golden State declined to match his offer sheet. Malevy Leons has a two-way deal at Golden State, Tristan Enaruna one at Cleveland, and Rienk Mast is in Indiana's training camp without a contract.
What to watch
The season opens on two questions that stand apart. The first is sporting: can a roster assembled in one summer work straight away, in Philadelphia and in Miami, or does the team that has been doing the same thing for two years win. The second is governance: does the salary cap hold now that it is clear how it can be circumvented, and what does the league do if it happens again.
On 20 October only the first part begins.