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https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/66...nba-investigation/?source=user_shared_article

What we know about ‘Uncle Dennis’: A central figure in the Kawhi Leonard, Clippers investigation
Dan Woike, Sam Amick, and Mike Vorkunov
Sept. 25, 2025Updated 9:55 am PDT
Before Dennis Robertson asked three NBA franchises for a list of perks so outside the norms that it spawned a league investigation, he wrote the foreword to a 90-page book about business and dining etiquette authored by his wife, Cheryl Walker-Robertson.

As readers learned about the art of a professional dinner — things like which utensils go where on a place setting, how to best hold a napkin, spoon soup and butter a roll — Robertson laid out the stakes.

Relationships, he wrote in the 2017 book, are built on connections. And initial impressions play into one’s ability to succeed.

“Commanding attention and standing out from among the crowd can seem almost impossible,” he wrote in the opening pages. “In all forms of relationships, how you communicate, both verbally and nonverbally, determine how you are perceived.

“In every game, there are rules.”

Two years later as the Los Angeles Lakers tried to sign Robertson’s nephew, Kawhi Leonard, they were convinced the uncle doing Leonard’s negotiating either hadn’t heard of any of the NBA’s rules or had just decided they didn’t apply.

And the impression he left was not a good one.

Leonard didn’t just want a max deal. He wanted unlimited access to a private plane, a house and guaranteed off-court earnings from endorsements, The Athletic previously reported. He also wanted a slice of the team itself — just like the Lakers had given Magic Johnson 25 years earlier after HIV forced him into early retirement.

The asks — all considered circumvention of the salary cap in the eyes of the NBA — were turned down by the team.

But Robertson asked for them again. And again. And again.

The Lakers repeatedly told Robertson that his requests were against the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. Outside of the negotiations, team sources said, the Lakers laughed at Robertson’s audacity. And to Robertson himself, team president Jeanie Buss underscored the outrageousness of the requests by saying he should attempt to get other teams to agree to his terms in writing.

Leonard ultimately chose to sign with the LA Clippers in 2019, the team meeting a different demand by trading for co-star Paul George. Those 2019 negotiations led to an investigation by the NBA, which concluded there was no evidence that the Clippers granted any of Robertson’s improper requests.

Now, the dealings by Robertson and Leonard have surfaced again as the superstar forward, the Clippers and team owner Steve Ballmer face an investigation about whether the Clippers ran afoul of the league’s salary cap rules. The investigation stems from a previously unannounced endorsement deal with Aspiration, a company with close business ties to the Clippers and Ballmer, that could have netted Leonard close to $50 million, as first reported by Pablo Torre on his “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast earlier this month.

Leonard never publicly promoted Aspiration. Robertson did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story. The Clippers have denied wrongdoing and declined comment for this story through a spokesperson.

The Athletic conducted interviews with 17 different sources, league and team personnel and agents for this story, including multiple people who have had direct dealings with Robertson and Leonard. The Athletic granted the sources anonymity so they could speak openly about a sensitive situation that is under league investigation.

The Lakers, it turns out, weren’t the only ones getting these requests in 2019. Robertson asked Leonard’s then-incumbent team, the Toronto Raptors, for the same set of benefits, league sources confirmed to The Athletic. The Clippers heard the same.

“There’s no beginning and there’s no end to what he’d ask for,” an executive involved in the negotiations said. “…There’s a bizarre expectation, not entitlement, but like a willingness to ask for crazy things.”

Ballmer and his organization have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and have said they’re cooperating with the investigators, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The law firm’s investigation, while primarily focused on whether the Clippers and Ballmer conspired with Aspiration to circumvent the salary cap, is not limited to Aspiration’s deal with Leonard, a source familiar with the process told The Athletic. The firm can review the 2019 allegations or any other wrongdoing, should new information be uncovered.

As it relates to Robertson, the question of whether the Clippers capitulated to his improper requests will be a central aspect of the league’s findings. In a way, Robertson’s reputation within NBA circles is on trial here too.

Some sources shared the notion that a player representative asking for things outside the collective bargaining agreement isn’t unique to Robertson.

“When he got into serious conversations, there were asks,” a former general manager who knows Robertson said. “I think that happens a lot.”

But according to other executives and agents familiar with Robertson’s tactics, it’s the extremity of his requests that set him apart from so many other representatives or family members who routinely attempt to work around the league’s rules. As one executive put it, it’s like someone driving 75 miles per hour in a 35-mph zone while everyone else was cruising at 10 mph over the limit.

“There was no one governing him,” an agent said. “… He worked without any guardrails.”

The lack of guardrails has Robertson, Leonard and the Clippers in the center of what could turn out to be a massive NBA scandal.

Multiple sources interviewed by The Athletic painted a portrait of Robertson as a single-minded advocate for his nephew who also had little problems requesting preferential treatment on small and large scales. The range of reactions to his style was vast, with several sources expressing animosity for him while others understood his motivations and marveled at his unusual boldness.

“I was amused by it,” said one former team employee. “I appreciated the hustle of ‘He’s my nephew, he’s the leader of the team and we want everything.’”

One executive said that if Robertson saw a team-issued sweatshirt he liked on the practice court, he’d make it his priority to get one by the end of the day with the same kind of persistence and determination that he used to ask teams for extra benefits during those 2019 negotiations.

Sources from all three of Leonard’s NBA homes — in addition to the Clippers and Raptors, Leonard also played for the San Antonio Spurs from 2011-18 — had similar experiences with Robertson making repeated asks both big and small.

“The things he needs and the things he wants are indistinguishable,” an executive with direct knowledge said.

Minor requests, gripes about tickets, meals and such, are fairly common for people close to star players, and teams almost always meet those demands, especially for players like Leonard.

“He’s a sophisticated guy and a smart guy and aggressive,” a former GM said of Robertson. “If he asked for stuff and he did things; I think it’s not as much of an outlier as he’s being positioned as being. If he were an insider and a traditional agent, everyone would say ‘Agents do this all the time.’ But the framework is what makes him different. And a lot of people don’t like it.”

The framework, of course, is that Robertson isn’t a registered agent — and he’s not like any other NBA uncle. He’s Uncle Dennis, a singular character who doesn’t even need a surname to get a reaction.

“He is what he is,” one general manager said after this latest investigation into possible salary-cap circumvention. “I really don’t want to go down this road.”

Another team executive summed it up — “If you’re an opportunistic person, in the NBA, there are opportunities everywhere.”

But Robertson’s defenders around the NBA point to this behavior as being born more out of advocacy than outright greed — simply a former banker fully understanding the rules of supply and demand. As recently as last summer, when Leonard was training to play with Team USA in the Paris Olympics, sources said discussions with Robertson about his nephew and the injury that ultimately forced him off the team were never contentious.

“It’s difficult because he’s not your traditional representative,” a former general manager said. “There are a lot of different transactions in the NBA where you’re asked for things. People want things that are not above board; 99 percent of the time you say no. If you say yes, it’s not the person who asked for it at fault.”

But one team source who directly negotiated with Robertson said it wasn’t the asks that were the biggest problem; it was that he didn’t stop making them.

Before he became the NBA’s most famous relative, Dennis Robertson was a hooper himself, someone who worked his way from Dorsey High in Los Angeles to junior college to the College of Idaho, a small liberal arts school less than 30 miles from Boise.

There he became the team’s best defensive player and its athlete of the year. After briefly playing semi-professionally, Robertson, who majored in business management, moved into a career in finance. According to his LinkedIn profile, Robertson worked in banking for more than 30 years, including over 22 at Chase Bank before leaving in 2009 to become a vice president, retail sales manager at Carver Federal Savings Bank.

“During his tenure in banking, he has been recognized for rising to ever increasing levels of responsibility by overseeing all operational functions relating to policies and procedures, management, leadership development, and customer service,” his LinkedIn page reads.

As Robertson made the move to Carver, his nephew began his road to stardom at San Diego State, where his defensive prowess, offensive potential and a legendary work ethic made the former top high school player in California a Second Team NCAA All-American by his sophomore season.

Robertson took on a larger role in Leonard’s life after Leonard’s father, Mark, was murdered in 2008 at the car wash he owned in Compton, Calif. The crime remains unsolved. Leonard was just 16 at the time of his father’s death. And after the shooting, Robertson helped his sister, Kim, raise her son.

“With my dad passing away, there aren’t too many men in the family and he’s a great guy to just talk to that has been through my experiences at my age,” Leonard told the San Antonio Express-News in 2014. “He’s just been through life already; good guy to talk to.”

That same year, Leonard was a surprise NBA Finals MVP after he helped shut down LeBron James and his Miami Heat in just five games. Despite being surrounded by future Hall of Famers, with legendary coach Gregg Popovich leading the way, it was Leonard who was given the top individual honor when it mattered most.

As quiet as he was, Leonard’s play did more than enough talking. The spotlight brightened. The off-court business possibilities started coming his way. That’s when Robertson became more interested in Leonard’s marketability and began escalating his efforts on that front,” a source familiar with the family said.

“If (endorsers) want me to get out of the gym, it will have to be a lot of money,” Leonard told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2014.

Reporting in 2018 by the Express-News detailed how Robertson’s growing influence played a role in Leonard’s fracturing relationship with the Spurs.

An extension with Jordan Brand fell apart, with sources saying that Robertson’s dissatisfaction played a role in the dissolution of the relationship. Leonard went on to sign a deal with New Balance that was reportedly even more lucrative.

Robertson also became very involved in the communications between Leonard and the Spurs medical staff — the cause of the biggest strain between the emerging star and the franchise where he was a back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year and the league’s top two-way talent. Disagreements over Leonard’s mysterious quad injury that limited him to just nine games in 2018 precipitated a trade request, with the Spurs ultimately sending Leonard to the Raptors.

To that point, the Spurs organization had been renowned for its ability to have high-level relationships with its star players within a team-first, selfless culture that Popovich and then-general manager R.C. Buford created. Leonard was widely seen as the next in line, the kind of elite player who would usher in their next era of championship contention. But communication between the two sides was a major issue near the end, with the mystery surrounding Leonard’s health and availability creating friction that ultimately led to a split.

“I think it just became a lack of trust,” Robertson told Yahoo! Sports in 2019. “They didn’t believe Kawhi couldn’t play and that caused a lack of trust in us and then us not believing in them. Any time a player says he’s not capable of playing, you should believe him. Why would Kawhi just stop playing all of a sudden? He’s a competitor.

“Sometimes you get these team doctors telling you what you can and cannot do, and Kawhi was just in too much pain to get out there. This was a serious issue. They didn’t believe him, and after that, the relationship couldn’t recover and we decided we had to move on.”

By the time Leonard got to Toronto, his view on the NBA experience had changed. As one person who was close to him at the time described Leonard’s perspective, “Nobody’s gonna look after you but you.”

Over time, that mentality applied to off-court matters too.

“I don’t think it was any different when it came to making asks,” the person continued. “You don’t know unless you ask. And the more you do it, the more comfortable you get. When you have all these people trying to make you happy, why not take advantage of it?”

If that was Leonard’s approach at the start of his one season in Toronto, then it was only emboldened by what came next. With his free agency looming in 2019, the Raptors limited Leonard to just 60 regular-season games, working with the star and his uncle to make things in Toronto as comfortable as possible. Robertson’s influence was omnipresent at the time, two sources said, with no limit to the matters that “would be micromanaged” by him, as one source put it.

“He had a reputation coming (to Toronto), and he certainly lived up to it,” the source said.

Then Leonard rewarded the franchise with its most famous shot — a game-winner against the Philadelphia 76ers that bounced and bounced and bounced off the rim before falling through — and an NBA championship. He was even named finals MVP for a second time, joining LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only others in league history to win that honor for multiple organizations.

Leonard capped his season with a parade through the streets of Toronto, riding on a bus with a cigar in his mouth and the NBA championship trophy in his hand. He wore a shirt that read “Board man gets paid” — a motto of his in high school and college that he repeated as he cleaned shot after shot off the glass.

One other person on Leonard’s bus, soaking in the championship atmosphere, was in charge of making sure the board man got paid: Uncle Dennis.



Dennis Robertson takes in the scene as the Toronto Raptors beat the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 of the NBA Finals at Oracle Arena. (Steve Russell /Toronto Star via Getty Images)
As a matter of technicality, Dennis Robertson isn’t an agent. He’s dabbled in the space and has had conversations with other agents about forming partnerships, league sources told The Athletic. But the agent who represents Kawhi Leonard is Mitch Frankel. (Leonard, according to RealGM, is just one of two active clients for Frankel in the NBA along with Indiana Pacers reserve Tony Bradley.)

Robertson’s title officially is “President of the Elite Athlete Division” of Protocol International, the name of the business he runs with his wife — the same business that produced the dining etiquette book for which he wrote the foreword.

The company issued a news release celebrating Clippers assistant Jeremy Castleberry when he was named the “San Diego Clippers’ G-League Summer League team” head coach. Castleberry, one of Leonard’s closest friends since college, has been an assistant on every one of Leonard’s teams since 2015.

The release, which is posted on Protocol International’s Instagram page, refers to Robertson as “Uncle Dennis.”



The league, for better or worse, is full of people who aren’t certified agents but who still handle business for players. And those people want things — tickets, clothes, meals, travel arrangements and access.

Robertson, according to people familiar with the situation, wanted that stuff too.

“In the realm of handlers, managers, friends, the other behavior was normal — those guys all want free s—,” one source said. “…There was no favor too small for him to ask.”

But Robertson’s involvement in Leonard’s 2019 summer had a ripple effect that went well beyond the norm. Had Leonard chosen to re-sign with Toronto, the Raptors could only offer $190 million over five years. His other suitors were restricted to $141 million over four years. Enter Uncle Dennis.

The league investigated the dealings between Leonard and the teams that were chasing him in free agency, but found no evidence that any of the lavish requests had actually been granted. Still, they made it clear at the time that any subsequent evidence indicating otherwise would be grounds to re-open the investigation. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver made clear privately at the time, salary-cap circumvention was seen as the cardinal sin in the league and, if proved, would be dealt with appropriately.

Months later, just as Leonard was set to start his first training camp with the Clippers in September 2019, Silver told owners during New York meetings that he would be revamping some free agency rules and reinforcing the ones that, in his estimation, were too often ignored. The National Basketball Players Association was asked to assist with this problem as well.

Union officials re-emphasized the rules of representation with its 400-plus players, reminding them that only certified agents were authorized to negotiate directly with teams. As one prominent agent said at the time, “This is because of Dennis. He didn’t know the rules.”

Said one owner back then: “This (leaguewide discussion) is all because of Uncle Dennis.”

In addition to the 2019 tampering investigation, the Clippers have faced multiple lawsuits, including one from Robertson’s former Dorsey High teammate Johnny Wilkes and litigation from former Clippers trainer Randy Shelton. Wilkes’ lawsuit was dismissed in 2022 for failure to provide supporting evidence.

According to a legal filing from Shelton, a trainer who worked with Leonard, Robertson had insisted that he represent Shelton in negotiations with the team.

In the filing, Shelton claims he had to “either agree to pay Mr. Robertson 10 percent of Plaintiff’s total compensation from the Clippers, or Mr. Robertson would not permit Plaintiff to join the team or sign a new contract. This coercion, coupled with Mr. Robertson’s widely reported control over the Clippers’ organization through his relationship with Kawhi Leonard, raises significant concerns of duress and undue influence.”

According to several league sources with knowledge of such arrangements, standard commission for contracts is typically 4 percent. Shelton’s lawsuit is still working its way through the legal system.

As people around the NBA learned about the latest round of reporting surrounding Leonard and extra benefits, the details about Robertson being the person who made sure Leonard got the endorsement money from Aspiration rang especially true to people who had worked with him.

“That’s classic Dennis,” a general manager said.

This past season, Leonard sat in front of a golden curtain wearing a black track suit with KL2 — the name that appears on the LLC at the center of the Aspiration investigation — on the front of his jacket. He had a huge smile on his face as he celebrated Robertson receiving the College of Idaho Presidential Medallion.

“Congratulations on receiving the College of Idaho Presidential Medal,” Leonard said in a recorded message to his uncle last February. “Enjoy the moment. You deserve this.”

The man behind the scenes of one of the NBA’s biggest stars got his moment at the center of the court. After the message from Leonard played for Robertson’s turn in the spotlight, the former College of Idaho star received a framed No. 32 jersey. He thanked his teammates and brought them to the court. He spoke about his wife and showed gratitude for the administration, the college community and his former coach, pride from the achievement written all over his face.

Robertson was at ease with the microphone in his hand, leading the small group of fans in a cheer that he hoped they’d hear in downtown Boise.

“College of Idaho….Goooooooo Yotes.”

Robertson has maintained a presence at the place that launched his career in banking and sports management, earning a spot on the College of Idaho’s Board of Trustees in 2021.

“Dennis brings to the table his high energy, competitive edge, personable leadership skills, and proven track record,” read a release announcing his appointment.

One of his former teammates on the College of Idaho basketball team, Doug Brigham, is the school’s chief executive officer.

“I’ve known Dennis since college and he has been a good friend and a wonderful supporter of our students — always very generous with his time, willing to talk to students and helpful with practical advice,” he said in an email.

The night he earned that honor, Robertson appeared humbled and gracious, his legacy at his school even further formalized.

Around the NBA, the way Robertson will be remembered has yet to be written and probably never will be.

Is this all about advocacy for family, an uncle trying to get as much compensation as possible for an endlessly talented player whose silence might’ve provided teams the opportunity to take advantage of him? Or is Robertson greedy? Willfully ignorant or disrespectful of league procedure? Is he merely a capitalist — a successful banker with the fortune to negotiate from a position of leverage?

“Part of this is on Kawhi,” one league executive said. “He allows (Robertson) to operate. There’s a vacuum. The lack of communication creates this void and he just fills it.”

“They never went against each other,” another league source who worked with Leonard said. “They’re one in the same in my mind. But Uncle Dennis doesn’t mind being the bad guy.”

At the end of the day, that distinction almost doesn’t matter. As Robertson said himself, it’s the way people react to you.

“Simply put, impressions matter,” he wrote in his wife’s book, “and you only have a few seconds to make your mark.”

 

I’m forever out on Zion. No dedication to his body, until recently, and will still be a strong candidate for injury because of how he plays. He also has zero excuses for not developing an elbow jumper.

 

Yeah, it does look better. Shooting and shooting form is defntly something that could be fixed. Players such as Bruce Bowen, Derek Fisher, Jason Kidd, and Lonzo Ball and many more have turned them selves into shooters. Defense is the thing that seems to be extremely difficult to improve upon.

 

It would take way more than that for teams to change how they guard him. No one is thinking twice about leaving Vando to help on Luka, LeBron or Austin if he's shooting 33%. Teams were still daring Aaron Gordon to shoot in the playoffs and he was over 40% all season.

I'll believe Vando being a respectable shooter when I see it. The worst shooters you've ever seen in the NBA make most of their threes in warmups or open gym. Vando becoming a decent finisher and passer out of those short roles is way more important IMO.

 

lol, they're so just pinning this on uncle dennis. to which i say, again, the message is just to have a non-agent make your cap circumvention work!