David Samson says NBA went too soft on Los Angeles Clippers

The punishment the NBA handed down to the Los Angeles Clippers for circumventing the league salary cap through no-show sponsorship deals signed by Kawhi Leonard is unprecedented in American professional sports.

The Clippers were stripped of five future first-round NBA Draft picks, received one-year suspensions for owner Steve Ballmer and president of business operations Gillian Zucker, and a six-month suspension for president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank. In addition, the Clippers and Ballmer were fined $30 million.

While the draft-pick penalty mirrors the initial penalty for the Minnesota Timberwolves when they developed a scheme to sign Joe Smith in 2000, two of those picks were eventually restored. And the $3.5 million fine is no comparison, even with inflation, to the monetary penalty for the Clippers.

But for David Samson, it still wasn’t enough.

Appearing on The Dan Le Batard Show, the former Miami Marlins executive said the severity of the salary cap circumvention called for even harsher punishment, perhaps up to and including firing the executives in question and forcing Ballmer to sell the team.

David Samson is NOT impressed by the Clippers’ punishment pic.twitter.com/z5Uxt1sfnI

— The Dan Le Batard Show (@LeBatardShow) September 3, 2026

“The penalty was so soft,” Samson said. “Zucker should have been fired, Frank fired, and Ballmer suspended for at least two years, if not forced to sell.”

“Let’s see what the NBA allows. If Kawhi gets traded to the Clippers and they get two of those five back, then they’re a net down three. If the NBA does not approve the trade, or they don’t approve the return, then we will see what the final loss of picks is. Thirty million dollars? Steve Ballmer is not going to change. It’s a capped league. He will still spend to the cap each year and try not to circumvent it for what will be a record third time. But in theory, he’s still going to be able to spend what he’s always been able to spend. So it’s not going to have an impact on the operation.”

Ultimately, Steve Ballmer will maintain his ownership of the Clippers, unlike predecessor Donald Sterling after his own scandal. Of course, that was for entirely different reasons that came from outside basketball. However, Samson sees that with Ballmer’s ownership and vast fortune still intact, the NBA didn’t come down hard enough with a transformational punishment for the franchise. A $30 million fine for a man worth almost $150 billion might as well be worth a couple of pennies.

“Will they fire Lawrence Frank the way Jim Crane fired Jeff Luhnow the next day after the Astros scandal? Maybe you bring in another GM. So I don’t see it as impactful on the court as other people are. It’s not the death star to the Clippers franchise whatsoever. It’s not that sponsors are running away from Intuit Dome or Steve Ballmer. So that’s why I don’t think it was harsh enough,” Samson stated.

If the NBA punishment is too soft, the question becomes what else could they have done, short of stripping the next 50 years of first-round draft picks. Could they have limited their cap spending? Taken a page from college sports and vacated past wins? Or perhaps a page out of European soccer and issue a deduction in the standings for this coming season? Those might not have been very realistic options. Short of banning Steve Ballmer and making him sell the team, which might run contrary to the league’s interests in jettisoning their wealthiest owner, the NBA may feel like it did the most it could do.

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