Nearly a year to the day that Pablo Torre published his first episode reporting on the Kawhi Leonard cap circumvention saga with a company called Aspiration, the league has finally doled out punishment to both Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Clippers certainly came away worse for wear than the All-NBA forward they signed back in 2019. Per Shams Charania of ESPN, they were stripped of five first round draft picks, given a $30 million dollar fine to governor Steve Ballmer, as well as suspensions
for Ballmer and executives Lawrence Frank and Gillian Zucker. Leonard was hit with a measly $700,000 dollar fine while Dennis Robertson, his uncle and former agent, was banned by the NBA from all business dealings.
So here’s how these different punishments will affect the Sixers, because there are several ways they could. Obviously, the Clippers owe the Sixers a first round swap in 2029, the year Charania reported the Clippers will begin to be stripped of draft picks.
The good news is that won’t be impacted by this punishment. Zach Lowe of The Ringer reported that the 2029 first rounder that will be stripped from the Clippers will be the Indiana Pacers’ first rounder owed to them from the trade that sent Ivica Zubac to Indiana.After Lowe’s report both Derek Bodner of PHLY and Adam Aaronson of PhillyVoice confirmed that the Sixers pick swap will remain in tact.
The Sixers remain in control of the pick swap, but it hasn’t gotten any easier to project how valuable that will be. With the new lottery rules in place it feels impossible to predict that so far out. The Clippers are a team that hasn’t really tanked since Ballmer bought them, and they certainly won’t be incentivized to without control of any of their picks.
Still, they were a team that wasn’t able to get out of the Play-In tournament, and now it seems they’ll officially be replacing Leonard with Brandon Ingram. The Toronto Raptors re-aquired Leonard in a trade early in the offseason, but the league put that deal on hold until the cap circumvention investigation was completed. Now that has without Leonard’s contract being voided or suspended, there’s nothing stopping his return to Toronto. In the statement he released to Charania, Leonard expressed his desire to move forward with a clean slate in Toronto.
So as we preview the Eastern Conference, it’s time to finally sharpie Leonard into that Raptors roster. He presents just as many, if not more injury concerns for getting through the playoffs as this Sixers roster does. But a 46-win team swapping out Ingram for Leonard certainly won’t be getting worse.
