It’s been quite a week in the NBA news cycle. It was revealed last week that Kawhi Leonard was circumventing the NBA salary cap with the LA Clippers by having a “sponsorship deal” with a tree-planting company that was traced back to the team. It wasn’t a real sponsorship deal, and Leonard was receiving a higher salary from the team without it affecting their cap. Well, turns out his camp was trying to do the same thing when negotiating a deal for him to return to Toronto back in 2019.
If you are a Toronto
Raptors fan, you know the saga of “Will He Stay?” It was a lot of city-wide initiatives, plane tracking, and speculation from Toronto residents about whether or not Kawhi would stay another season in Toronto, running back most of the Championship squad in an attempt to win back-to-back. If he had stayed, there was a good chance they would have returned to the Finals. Of course, the pandemic would have happened, and the rest of the season would have been played in the bubble, so who knows. It’s all what ifs, given Leonard ended up signing with his hometown Clippers and returning to California. At the time, fans were disappointed but understood the reasoning: he wanted to go home.
Apparently, it had a lot to do with money, as well.
You see, as more comes to light about what I am calling “Tree-Plant-Gate” (maybe that will stick), it seems Leonard and Uncle Dennis were planting the seeds back in 2019. (lol planting the seeds)
Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star has reported that Leonard’s camp had been asking for multiple “extras” to persuade him to stay in Toronto. First, it was an ownership stake in the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is impossible because they are owned by MLSE (which also owns the Toronto Raptors). Uncle Dennis didn’t do his homework on that one. According to Arthur, another part of the deal was a trade for Paul George, something that obviously ended up happening in LA.
Another extra Leonard’s camp wanted, according to Arthur’s reporting, was no-show sponsorship deals and ownership stakes in outside companies. Basically, free money. When Toronto retorted that there would be extensive sponsorship opportunities for Leonard should he stay in Toronto, Uncle Dennis apparently replied that he “didn’t want to do anything for them.” So, no ad-shoots, no in-person appearances, the usual things that come with sponsorship deals. He just wanted the money without having to do any of that. Arthur reports he wanted an extra $10 million from that kind of stuff. MLSE said no. Leonard left. He seems to have gotten that in LA.
Other than it being kind of arrogant, is there a real problem with asking for things like no-show sponsorship deals? Well, it falls under the term “circumventing the salary cap,” so the short answer is, yeah. The salary cap exists to try to make the NBA fair for all teams, but players and their teams sometimes get frustrated that there is a limit to how much money they can make. So, they try to find other ways to accumulate income, and it gets sneaky when they don’t want to do anything for it.
Sponsorships are part of sports, but it’s a transactional thing: the companies are making money on a player’s name, image, and likeness. Companies want to pay athletes to be on the front of their cereal box because that means fans will buy their cereal. That involves going to a photoshoot, making a commercial, you know, doing a bit of work.
These under-the-table deals aren’t sponsorships; they are sneaky ways to add on salary for a player that won’t impact a team’s cap.
A similar thing came to light with the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces a few years ago. The Aces are owned by the same guy who owns the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders, so he has cash to give out. Yet, the WNBA has a very strict hard salary cap, and it’s not very high. It was revealed that players were being paid under the table for similar no-show sponsorship deals. It’s tricky because obviously, the WNBA salary is not as high as it should be, and the players deserve more. Yet, it was clearly against the rules, and the WNBA investigated — nothing regarding a verdict or punishment has been announced yet.
It’s hard to prove these things, of course. These guys know what they are doing, and all it will take is for Kawhi Leonard to go take a picture next to a newly planted tree for them to make it seem like he’s actually participating in a sponsorship deal. Will he get punished? Maybe.
Knowing this now, it adds a lot of context to why Leonard didn’t return to Toronto. He won his chip, and now he wanted added benefits. It wasn’t about the location or the team or the championship hopes; it was about money. People will have varying opinions about whether they think Toronto should have just paid him the money and gotten him back, but I think it shows a little bit of integrity from the team.
