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Sunday Edition
October 12, 2025
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Remember FTX? The crypto exchange exploded seemingly out of nowhere, ballooned to a $32 billion valuation, put its name on the Miami Heat arena, then went down in flames. As the league investigates what happened with the Clippers and team sponsor Aspiration, I keep thinking about FTX and what the NBA could and should learn from the second time in recent memory that a team sponsorship has become a black eye.
Speaking of basketball, scroll to read about our exclusive story this week on the upstart global basketball league formerly known as the “Maverick Carter league.”
— Dan Roberts [[link removed]]
Clippers’ Aspiration Fiasco Recalls Another Doomed NBA Sponsorship [[link removed]]
Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
How big of a problem is the Clippers controversy for the NBA?
If you ask Pablo Torre, who first broke the story [[link removed]] of Kawhi Leonard’s $28 million “no-show” endorsement deal with green-banking company Aspiration about a month ago on his podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, it’s “ the defining scandal of Adam Silver’s tenure as commissioner [[link removed]].”
If you ask Mark Cuban, it’s no problem at all. “I don’t think the Clippers did anything wrong,” he told Front Office Sports on Thursday over email. “So zero problem.”
Torre has certainly uncovered compelling evidence [[link removed]] that raises many questions. Why did Clippers owner Steve Ballmer continue putting money in Aspiration—and also in the personal charity of cofounder Joe Sanberg—even after news broke [[link removed]] that Aspiration was under investigation by the feds? Why did his Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong invest in it, too? In what world is a $28 million player endorsement deal involving no ads or appearances normal?
The NBA has initiated an investigation to attempt to answer these questions. Such investigations take months, not weeks, and the league knows the public’s attention span is short. Here’s an easy prediction: This one won’t end with the NBA making Ballmer sell the team like the Donald Sterling investigation did. Depending on what the league finds, it could yield anything from a major to a minor punishment to nothing at all. The NBA could conclude it buys Ballmer’s thin explanation that Aspiration “conned me.”
I’m more interested in how a little-known carbon-credits fintech company secured a $300 million deal as an official “founding sponsor” of an NBA team—a price and designation that required NBA approval [[link removed]].
The situation reminds me very much of FTX, the fraudulent crypto exchange that launched in 2019, surged to a $32 billion valuation by early 2022, and collapsed by the end of that same year [[link removed]]. Along the way, FTX cozied up to Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen [[link removed]], plus a slew of athlete endorsers. (Aspiration had Drake [[link removed]] and Leo DiCaprio [[link removed]].) In March 2021, FTX entered a 19-year, $135 million stadium naming rights deal [[link removed]] with the Miami Heat.
Why did the Heat, NBA, and city of Miami trust that a company that had existed for less than two years would be around for 19 years? In an interview with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried—now serving a 25-year sentence in a California prison—in May 2021, I asked him [[link removed]] that. He smiled and said, “It’s been a pretty good year for us. To the point where, frankly, we don’t need to rely on the other 18 years to have the funds for this.” By January 2023, the company was dead and its logo stripped from the Heat arena.
FTX Arena
I asked Silver about the league’s approval process for team sponsors [[link removed]] onstage at our Tuned In summit in New York on Sept. 16. “This was not something that was on our radar to even be thinking about,” he responded. “When this concludes, we’ll take a fresh look at our rules in terms of companies that players are investing in, and owners.”
But then he argued that the NBA can’t fully look into every team sponsor.
“There are literally thousands of deals that cover all our teams,” he said. “And these are brands that have major investors, major funds—that was certainly clear of the crypto world at the time. And so, yes, there’s a league approval process, but it doesn’t go deep into interviewing executives for every deal that comes through the league office.”
And in response to my mention of FTX, Silver appeared to suggest that because crypto prices are up right now, little-known crypto companies look less shady.
“Let’s go back to those [crypto] deals,” he said. “Now crypto’s back up. We have deals with some of the crypto companies now, and now the market is killing, going crazy on crypto. So is there a different view now? I’m just saying, we live in a market economy, there is a government that regulates these industries, there are teams and team owners that are risking their reputations and brands.”
I am certainly not suggesting the NBA needs to interview executives from every team sponsor to ensure they’re honest and aboveboard. That would not be realistic. But clearly it should more closely scrutinize sponsors at the $300 million level. Because you have to wonder how many more Aspirations there are across the NBA—and other leagues, too.
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What’s Next in Sports Finance
We’re bringing together the most powerful minds in sports finance at the New York Stock Exchange for Asset Class [[link removed]], presented by DealMaker.
Newly confirmed speakers include two-time Olympic gold medalist Kristen Faulkner, former Knicks and Jazz executive-turned-investor David Checketts, and New York Islanders co-owner Jon Ledecky.
They’ll be joined by leaders from HBSE, The Chernin Group, NOCAP Sports, Goldman Sachs, Andalusian, RedBird Capital, Monarch Collective, DealMaker, and Sequence Equity for conversations exploring athlete ownership, emerging investment models, and the future of sports funding.
This event is sold out. Learn more [[link removed]].
What We Know About Project B
Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Imagesa
On Tuesday night, FOS broke the news [[link removed]] that the long-rumored Maverick Carter–advised global basketball league plans to launch next fall—but Carter is out. The league, code-named Project B, shared details exclusively with FOS—but not all the details. Here’s what we know, and still don’t, about Project B.
Skype cofounder Geoff Prentice and former Facebook exec Grady Burnett have been working full-time on the league for nearly two years. Maverick Carter was advising them, but no longer has any involvement whatsoever. Project B isn’t saying how much money it has raised. Investors include investment firms Quiet Capital, Sequence Capital, and Mangrove Capital, as well as individuals Gaby Sulzberger, an executive Centerbridge Partners; Merline Saintil, lead independent director for Rocket Lab; Niklas Zennström, founder of venture capital firm Atomico; and Meta executive Ime Archibong. Athlete investor/advisers include Candace Parker, Alana Beard, Lauren Jackson, Novak Djokovic, Sloane Stephens, and Steve Young. Steve Young tells FOS: “I’ve long been energized around player empowerment and player equity, so I made an early-stage investment. several years ago in Project B to support that ambition and be an advisor.” The league plans to launch in fall 2026 with men’s and women’s 5-on-5 and will play in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Project B says it has at least one current WNBA player committed to play, but won’t name her. The players will receive equity in the league, but Project B has not disclosed specifics.
Read the full story here [[link removed]].
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