Geoff Bennett:
The NBA handed out one of its harshest penalties in history against the L.A. Clippers for circumventing the salary cap with its star forward, Kawhi Leonard. The league suspended the team’s owner and fined the Clippers $30 million.
William Brangham has more.
William Brangham:
The NBA’s powerful rebuke followed a yearlong investigation, which detailed how Clippers executives allegedly set up four separate side deals where other companies would pay Leonard. That boosted the stars’ income and thus violated the NBA’s salary cap.
In addition to the $30 million fine and suspending team owner Steve Ballmer for a year, several other team executives were barred, the team will lose five consecutive first-round draft picks starting in 2029, and the Clippers will be monitored by the league for five years.
Kawhi Leonard won’t be facing suspension, and his contract remains intact. He has to pay a $700,000 fine, and it’s expected that he’s going to be traded to the Toronto Raptors.
So for more on this scandal, we are joined by David Aldridge. He’s senior sports columnist for The Athletic.
David, thank you so much for being here.
In a column that you wrote today about this scandal, you noted that NBA commissioner Adam Silver, in bringing this punishment down, — quote — “met the moment.” What do you mean by that?
David Aldridge, The Athletic:
Well, William, everybody in the league has been following this for the last year, since the initial podcast by Pablo Torre, who’s been doing an incredible job on this over the last year, multiple episodes detailing multiple instances of things that just didn’t make sense, right, that he was getting information about the Clippers and the deals with Kawhi Leonard that didn’t make sense.
So everyone in the league wanted to know, what was Adam Silver going to do if the investigation from Wachtell Lipton said that, yes, the Clippers have circumvented the cap, in our opinion, and here’s the reasons why we say that, because Steve Ballmer is not your ordinary NBA owner.
Look, they’re all billionaires, and Steve Ballmer is richer than all of them, OK?Forbes has him as the 15th richest person in the world. We all — I think your viewers surely know about Steve Ballmer’s background and history. So — and he’s well liked amongst the other owners.
Nonetheless, the other owners are competitors, and their view was, if the Clippers have violated the salary cap, they need to be punished. And the detail to which Wachtell Lipton showed that alleged behavior, I really think left the league with no option.
A slap on the wrist, a light suspension, a second round draft pick, no suspensions of personnel would have really told the rest of the league, you can do whatever you want, it’s OK. The league said unequivocally with these punishments that the cap is sacrosanct, and you can’t do whatever you want to violate it.
William Brangham:
What do you make of Kawhi Leonard’s involvement in this? We know that his uncle, who apparently was involved in some of these deal negotiations, was barred also by the league.
David Aldridge:
Yes.
William Brangham:
But what do we know about Kawhi’s involvement and his future going forward?
David Aldridge:
Well, he put out a statement on Wednesday saying that he took responsibility for his company or his people’s actions, and he didn’t — he didn’t say that, I knew about the circumvention, but he said he took responsibility for the actions, right?
Look, yes, as you mentioned, there was a trade already in place that was held up by this investigation that would have sent Kawhi Leonard to the Toronto Raptors for a couple of players and multiple draft picks. And I think the NBA looked at this and said, we could suspend Kawhi Leonard. We could try to void his contract. It would almost certainly go to arbitration.
The players union has done this before in the past, and successfully, I might add, gotten players’ contracts restored, gotten suspensions reduced, and I don’t think the NBA wanted to fight that fight. I think they felt like the Clippers had to be the entity that bore the brunt of the punishment in this case.
But Kawhi’s going to go on. I’m sure — I don’t think anything’s going to keep the trade from going through, and he will go back to the Toronto Raptors, the team that he led to an NBA championship in 2018.
William Brangham:
In the last minute or so we have left, in losing all of those first-round draft picks, this seems to deal pretty serious blow to the Clippers going forward.
David Aldridge:
Yes, I think, William, that’s what a lot of the people around the league were looking at, because even though the league fined the Clippers $30 million, again, Steve Ballmer is an incredibly rich person. They can pay it. That’s not as punitive as losing the draft picks.
That was really, in my view, the only thing the NBA could do to really demonstrate the harshness of what it considered the cap violations and what it would do to punish teams that tried to do it. It’s — they did it many years ago to the Minnesota Timberwolves. They took five draft picks and ultimately they wound up giving two of them back.
So, the Clippers might well get one or two of their picks back down the road. But I think this was the best way, the league felt, to send a message that it was going to take cap circumvention very seriously, because draft picks are really the most important way to build rosters and try to great create superstars in the NBA.
William Brangham:
David Aldridge of The Athletic, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.
David Aldridge:
Thanks, William.
