NBA teams are out for blood as the Los Angeles Clippers face backlash on the ongoing Kawhi Leonard scandal.
Sports journalist Pablo Torre’s explosive exposé on the Clippers’ allegedly paying Leonard money under the table has dominated headlines over the past few weeks. Torre piled on even more evidence Thursday, linking Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong to a payment to now-bankrupt company, Aspiration, that appears to have been funneled into Leonard’s bank account.
While the Clippers have denied any wrongdoing, NBA executives are reportedly expecting league commissioner Adam Silver to make an example out of the Clippers.
NBA reporter Jake Fischer spoke to multiple team executives who, with their chests “puffed out,” have called for the Clippers to be punished in one of two ways: either LAC gets “docked multiple first-round picks” or Leonard’s contract is voided while still counting toward the team’s salary cap — or both.
If that does not happen, the team strategists Fischer spoke to would reportedly feel “emboldened to seek out their own version of shell companies” similar to what the Clippers allegedly did to pay Leonard more money.
One could look to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ salary cap circumvention scandal in 2000 as a reference point for what a severe punishment could look like. The Timberwolves’ then-owner Glen Taylor was fined $3.5 million and barred from team operations for one year. Minnesota’s general manager at the time, Kevin McHale, was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence. The most significant penalty was the team’s forfeiture of five first-round picks, with two of them later being returned.
The reported response around the league to the ongoing Clippers saga is hardly surprising. If the NBA determines beyond a reasonable doubt that there was indeed salary cap chicanery that went on, it would be of utmost importance for the league to set the proper precedent by imposing a punishment worthy of the crime.
Team owner Steve Ballmer is the richest owner in the NBA by a wide margin. Without the currently set salary cap rules — and teams abiding by those rules — Ballmer could virtually pay his way to a championship, or at least come close to it. That holds especially true in the NBA, where signing a Finals-MVP-caliber player like Leonard drastically alters a team’s title aspirations.
