17 Takes: The NBA's Clippers–Kawhi Saga
NBA Substack on the big controversy of the moment — and the future
We asked 17 leading NBA voices on Substack:
Your take on the Clippers–Kawhi saga?
Check out their answers and subscribe!
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The new season starts in mere days and the cloud that hangs over it thanks to L'Affaire Kawhi just keeps getting thicker.
This story and its mounting allegations of salary-cap circumvention keep generating the most damaging headlines in terms of the NBA's competitive integrity since the Tim Donaghy scandal. So much damage has already been done no matter where it goes from here. And I suspect Adam Silver knows it. He seemed to say as much this week at a conference organized by Front Office Sports when he acknowledged that "just the appearance of issues becomes, of course, a brand issue for the NBA right now."
That should help explain why, as Jake Fischer put it in a piece we published on The Stein Line last week, so many around the league are whispering that they see the Clippers as guilty until proven innocent. What would it take, at this point, to exonerate them in the public eye?
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As the (now) four-part series from Pablo Torre Finds Out rolls along, I don’t want folks to lose sight of a revelation that Torre presented in the very first episode: that Aspiration never announced Kawhi Leonard’s groundbreaking endorsement deal. It’s inexplicable.
As the mountains of evidence and financial papers pile up, that, to me, is the thing that sticks out the most — and I don’t want it to get buried under Torre’s marvelous investigative reporting.
As far as I can tell, it’s the richest team-sponsor endorsement deal of its kind in the world of pro sports. And yet, Aspiration, a company in which Steve Ballmer, Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong and the LA Clippers reportedly invested $118 million, evidently didn’t want anyone to know about it. Why?
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The punchline was just too easy: Didn't Kawhi Leonard already have a no-show job? He has started 53 percent of the Clippers' games in six years.
You had to be in L.A., in the Kawhi-AD summer of 2019, to know how imperative he was for the Clippers, but they never saw two red flags. Nobody asked, "If the Spurs couldn't make peace with this guy, how can we?” Or, "Kawhi's great, but who’s this uncle?”
Now this. A strong NBA punishment would be a lesson for everyone. Before you hire a Face Of Your Franchise, look him in the eyes first.
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I wrote about this at Basketball Feelings when Pablo first broke the story, and my stance hasn't changed — if anything it's deepened.
There was such resistance to the news, not just at face value, but the possibility of it. That Steve Ballmer, a billionaire, could be so sloppy, so dumb, so normal. That's certainly the part that seemed to resonate with Mark Cuban. How could this happen to one of us?
The Kawhi of it all, and whatever the league's justice is, both land less for me than the very tall torch we still carry for the wealthiest among us as would-be idols and moral lighthouses.
I hope this whole saga works like a jackhammer to the longstanding, foundational axiom that money means intelligence.
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When the NBA’s report comes out, if it merely nitpicks or confuses Pablo Torre’s version of events, rather than telling a better one, then I will assume the Clippers intentionally circumvented the salary cap.
Convincing me otherwise will need the story that completely encompasses the facts that Pablo has laid out and puts them into a more accurate context: Why did Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong give Aspiration so much money? Are there people involved in getting money from Ballmer to Aspiration to Kawhi Leonard who didn’t think it was about cap circumvention?
And, importantly: Why did Kawhi join the Clippers to begin with? Did they get requests to make payments outside of the rules? If so, how did the Clippers deal with those requests?
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Is this not the most fitting marriage of player and story in modern sports history?
Dating back to when he played nine games for the Spurs in a season clouded by mysterious injury circumstances, Kawhi Leonard has been the NBA’s version of Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal (RIP Robert Redford). His entire existence is shrouded in secrecy, complete with shady associates (Who plays Uncle Dennis in the movie version? Is Denzel available?) and suspicious means and motives.
Kudos to Pablo for uncovering the truth, but for as shocking as this story is, it makes all the sense in the world.
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Between this Clippers drama — which would be an even bigger story if Kawhi was still a top-25 player or a less monotonous persona — and the Commissioner’s wonky “This is … a highlights-based sport” lecture, the NBA’s pre-preseason is stuck at an intersection of skulduggery and cynicism.
The League’s narrative-creators are surely crafting yet another season in which the “face of the league” moniker is relentlessly foisted upon Anthony Edwards, and LeBron’s age must be hollered each time he touches the basketball. But the real challenge is that right now the coolest professional sports league, which is charging up to $982 for all games across platforms, looks — instead of where amazing happens — underhanded and out of touch.
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Sports journalism is alive and well!
That's the metatextual take, at least, which I think is important here in light of our broader press issues these days. I find that element — that of the relentless reporter vs. the equivocating owner/team — to be among the most fascinating parts of this whole saga.
And that's to say nothing of the famously aloof player at the center of this, who we still haven't heard from, and the almost as famously cautious commissioner who will be tasked with deciding how hard the hammer drops.
We're getting closer and closer to Joe Smith territory with each news drop. The whole thing's pretty captivating. Here's to the fourth estate.
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Most of the focus is on the Clippers and Steve Ballmer, but I wonder if Adam Silver will have the cojones to punish Kawhi with more than a perfunctory fine. It takes two to tango, and the Clippers aren't the only wrongdoers here. Player representatives, whether agents or family, need to follow the rules, too.
Silver has generally had a light hand when punishing players, even for serious off-court violations, but a precedent must be set. While a voided contract would open its own can of wriggling worms, a major suspension seems more than fair given Uncle Dennis’ repeated efforts across multiple teams to circumvent the salary cap for his nephew.
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If Steve Ballmer skates on this, it’s open season.
The playbook is elementary: funnel money through “sustainability partnerships,” route it to your stars, and rebrand it as innovation. Today it’s carbon credits, tomorrow crypto tokens, the day after a Saudi “green” fund.
Every owner is watching, because this stopped being about the Clippers a long time ago — it’s about precedent. If the richest governor proves you can get around the cap, the NBA’s notion of competitive balance becomes stagecraft.
Given that, the punishment applied — or not applied — could define not only Ballmer’s fate but the future of the league itself and Adam Silver’s authority.
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Each day, the Clippers-Kawhi Leonard situation passes the smell test less and less.
Each new piece of information looks worse for the Clippers, Leonard and everyone who may have been involved. It’s becoming clearer that the NBA, with Adam Silver at the forefront, won’t be able to let this one go with a slap on the wrist.
What will the punishment be? That’s unknown. However, it appears the league has to come down hard and set a precedent here. There already seems to be enough to levy a heavy punishment of lost draft picks, fines and suspensions.
One big question: Would voiding Leonard’s contract actually hurt the Clippers? In the immediate, yes. Leonard is good and LA is trying to win. But for the future, it would clear a potentially unwanted deal off the books.
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This saga is a reputational disaster for everyone, and I'm afraid it won't have a happy ending for anyone.
We have a franchise that might be punished — although perhaps not with everything it deserves? — after making a bet that seems both illicit and incorrect, given the Clippers’ lack of success (while OKC thrives). And a very wealthy businessman apparently stained by an unnecessary risk and trying to save himself. And a historically great player with two Finals MVPs whose reputation continues to grow toxic. And a league that damages its credibility if it does not point to a marquee team as a cheater.
What I said. A complete and absolute disaster.
Ray LeBov | Basketball Intelligence Newsletter
What I see is investigative reporting vs. cringeworthy, constantly morphing “wanna buy a bridge?” defense — claims of a record-setting number of coincidences strain credulity to the breaking point.
I can only hope Adam Silver does the right thing. As of now it looks like that should be the loss of multiple draft picks plus a long exile of those responsible on the Clippers’ side. A wrist slap would deeply damage Silver’s and the Association’s credibility, especially regarding integrity and their commitment to parity.
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Someone is going to come out looking really bad from this situation. The question now is who: Adam Silver and the NBA, or Steve Ballmer and the Clippers.
The amount of circumstantial but suspicious evidence presented by Pablo Torre has already made many fans and NBA people think the Clippers are guilty. As I see it, the only result can be a historic punishment for the Clippers or a very hard blow to the NBA's image of integrity. There's no middle ground.
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I don’t feel confident that the Clippers will be served — even if a “smoking gun” emerges revealing cap circumvention as the intent behind all this — with a penalty proportional to the violation.
I hope to be proven wrong.
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This whole saga has made me very concerned about the state of NBA media.
Suddenly, Pablo Torre has ushered in the triumphant return of investigative sports journalism, yet major media outlets (*cough cough* ESPN) appear to be doing PR management for those accused of basketball crimes. The usual “insiders” are suddenly silent in the face of the league’s biggest scandal since Tim Donaghy; podcasting player pundits question why Torre would go through the trouble of even investigating cap circumvention; others simply shrug their shoulders and proclaim that “everyone else does it.”
If one thing should be remembered from this saga, it’s this: There are more media mouthpieces than there are journalists, and that’s a shame.
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I find it interesting that the phrases "no-show" and "smoking gun" get thrown around so frequently here.
Would things be so different if Kawhi actually planted hundreds of trees?
And “smoking gun” or not, it would appear obvious that the Clippers committed cap circumvention — the amounts and timing of the money being funneled into Aspiration leave little doubt in my mind.
Given that promotional contracts between players and team-affiliated companies are quite common, it raises the question whether similar situations have occurred without being discovered.
Ultimately, I believe the league will see itself forced to create an entire department tasked with assuring that none of these contracts are out of line.
I think many of these takes are good, but Haberstroh's stands out to me as exceptional:
"... , I don’t want folks to lose sight of a revelation that Torre presented in the very first episode: that Aspiration never announced Kawhi Leonard’s groundbreaking endorsement deal ...
[possibly] the richest team-sponsor endorsement deal of its kind in the world of pro sports. And yet, Aspiration, a company in which Steve Ballmer, Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong and the LA Clippers reportedly invested $118 million, evidently didn’t want anyone to know about it. Why?"
That question "Why?" won't stop resonating.
I remember when Kawhi left Toronto. I thought well, he had it all....he won a title, and he leaves. Why? When the Spurs cant get along with their star, it says something about the star. Leonard emerges as a terrible example of prima donna star power, and maybe now ownership and front offices will learn something. Probably not, but Id like to hope so.