Anatomy of a Scandal

I’m a pretty passionate NBA fan. During the offseason, when there isn’t much NBA basketball to watch, I tend to get absorbed in its business.

Recently, I went deep on the LA Clippers/Kawhi Leonard scandal. The Clippers, owned by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, were accused of using outside companies to funnel additional money to Leonard, one of the league’s biggest stars, effectively paying him outside his NBA contract and circumventing salary-cap rules designed to preserve competitive balance.

The NBA brought in the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate. On September 2, Wachtell released a 36-page summary of its findings, which became a major news story. The league ultimately fined the Clippers $30 million, took away five future first-round draft picks and suspended Ballmer and two senior executives.

I read the Wachtell report because I’m an NBA nerd. But what stayed with me was how the league used the investigation to build public authority for its brand.

The NBA had access to information no one outside the league could obtain. It subjected that evidence to an outside investigative process, made the methodology visible, organized the findings into an argument that key constituencies could interrogate, and then published the results for others to use. In doing so, it turned proprietary information into a public authority asset.

That makes the Clippers report an unusually clear case study in something most companies struggle to do every day: convert what they know into evidence the market is willing to trust, use and carry forward. Authority doesn’t come from possessing information. It comes from making a credible argument from that information that other people are willing to adopt.

The trust business

The NBA isn’t just a consumer entertainment brand. It sits at the center of a large business ecosystem that includes 30 team ownership groups, media companies, commercial partners, the players’ association, agents, analysts and industry experts. They don’t all need the same information from the league, but they do need confidence in the system they are doing business with.

That confidence was already under pressure, mostly due to public concerns about the corrosive influence of gambling on the integrity of professional sports. A February 2026 Sacred Heart University/GreatBlue Research survey found the NBA was the major U.S. sports league most frequently identified as least trusted to protect the integrity of its games. Other polling has also found deep public skepticism about whether the NBA takes product integrity seriously. 

For a league whose economics depend on media rights, commercial partnerships, ticket sales and fan engagement, competitive integrity is not just a sporting issue. It is a foundational business asset. 

Audit trail

Companies often partner with research firms, universities, analyst firms or other outside institutions when they want proprietary information to carry more weight in the market. The organization supplies access and subject-matter knowledge. The outside partner supplies methodology, credibility and a degree of independence.

The NBA used Wachtell in much the same way. The law firm conducted 73 interviews with 60 people and reviewed more than 200,000 pages of documents. It consulted subject-matter experts, corroborated testimony and disclosed gaps and conflicting evidence.

That rigor mattered because the NBA was investigating one of its own teams under its own rules. The league could have simply announced a finding and imposed a penalty. Instead, the report gave outside audiences an evidence base they could evaluate for themselves.

Its structure helped. The report leads with its conclusions, explains the investigative process and relevant rules, then works through the evidence and counterarguments. An owner or executive can understand the case quickly. Lawyers and league experts can examine the details. Reporters and analysts can reconstruct the chronology and test the reasoning.

That is also how strong enterprise thought leadership works. A single piece of research may need to serve executives, specialists, influencers and practitioners at different levels of depth. They don’t all read the same way, but they all need a common evidence base.

Hot off the press

In the report, Wachtell states that it published its findings at the NBA’s request even though the investigation was not yet finished. Investigators were still receiving information during the week of publication and said the findings could later be supplemented.

The NBA needed an investigation to enforce its rules. Publishing a readable report before every investigative thread had been exhausted was an additional decision. It put proprietary analysis into the market where owners, partners, experts, reporters and others could examine and use it.

That is also how a strong flagship research program creates value. One substantial research investment establishes the evidence and argument, then supports many pieces of content and conversations over time.

Authority starts to become visible when other people use your research to make their own arguments. After publication, the Wachtell report became source material for news coverage, expert analysis, podcasts, explainers and timelines. Independent publishers turned it into searchable databases and plain-English guides. 

Within weeks, the report had reached over five million people, according to an analysis by the Brand24 media monitoring service. That audience included 400,000 who consumed coverage of the report in business, legal, and compliance media, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Harvard’s Compliance and Governance Forum. 

By NBA standards, five million people is a relatively small audience.  But the NBA didn’t need millions of fans to read all 36 pages of the report. It needed the people who influence the league’s business ecosystem to take the evidence seriously and bring it to larger audiences. By that measure, the report had significant impact. 

Proof points

Large companies have plenty of information that can help them build authority in markets: customer data, operating experience, product telemetry, original research and expertise outsiders simply don’t have.

Getting that information into the market is usually the hard part. Legal worries about disclosure. Executives worry about competitive information. Researchers worry about caveats. By the time everyone is finished managing risk, the most interesting parts have often disappeared.

The NBA/Wachtell report took a different approach. It exposed its methodology, acknowledged gaps, published while information was still coming in and gave outside audiences enough evidence to evaluate the argument for themselves.

That’s an object lesson in how authority gets built: start with proprietary information, subject it to a credible process, make the evidence inspectable and put it into the market in a form others can use. The real payoff comes when journalists, experts and other intermediaries begin carrying the argument themselves. At that point, the institution is no longer just making a claim. It has created an authority asset.

James Goldman is an enterprise content leader with more than 20 years of experience shaping strategy for Fortune 500 companies and leading content organizations. His work spans thought leadership, editorial strategy and operational innovation, with a focus on building market authority and business impact.

Source List

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Summary Report of Independent Investigators Concerning the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, September 2026

Sacred Heart University / GreatBlue Research, 2026 Nationwide Sports Gambling Poll

Quinnipiac University, November 2025 National Sports Poll

Sacred Heart University / GreatBlue Research, 2025 Sports Gamblers Poll

Edelman Trust Institute, 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Brand Trust, From We to Me

PwC, 2024 Trust Survey

SponsorUnited, NBA Sponsorship Intelligence Report 2025–26

The Wall Street Journal — “The Hush-Hush Demands and Phony Endorsements That Rocked the NBA”

ContractsProf Blog — analysis of the Wachtell Clippers report

The Kawhi Files — searchable version of the Wachtell report

The Clippers Report — plain-English guide

Brand24, media-monitoring analysis of “Wachtell report,” Sept. 2–19, 2026. Filtered to business, legal, compliance and sports-business sources; 23 non-social mentions; estimated non-social reach: 413,196. Brand24 methodology for estimated non-social reach