Kawhi Leonard was supposed to be a Raptor again by now. Instead he is stuck in limbo because the NBA cannot decide what to do with the Clippers.
The trade was agreed to weeks ago. Toronto ships out Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, and a truck full of picks. LA gets salary relief, draft capital, and the escape from a Leonard contract they never should have signed. Both teams put pen to paper. Everyone signed off.
Then the league said not so fast.
The Aspiration investigation has thrown the whole thing into chaos. The NBA is looking into whether the Clippers used the now bankrupt company Aspiration to pay Leonard 28 million dollars in “no show jobs” as a form of cap circumvention. The reporting has been out there for months. Now it matters.
Toronto is not going to accept Leonard until the league finalizes what happened. Because if Leonard gets suspended or if he faces any penalty, the Raptors would inherit the risk. That is not a small thing when you just gave up two starters and a pile of picks to bring him back.
The Raptors and Clippers announced on July 9 that the deal is on hold pending the results of the NBA investigation. That was ten days ago. There is no timeline for when the league will finish its review.
This is bad for a lot of people.
Kawhi is stuck. He signed off on the trade because he wanted to be back in Toronto, where he won a title in 2019. He does not want to play in LA anymore. But he cannot join his new team until the investigation is over.
The Clippers are stuck. They wanted this trade to happen because it starts a real reset. Ingram and Dick are pieces they can build with or flip. The picks give them long term flexibility. But they cannot start their offseason plan until this closes.
The Raptors are stuck too. They committed to bringing Kawhi back, which drives their planning for the roster, coaching staff, and marketing. All of that is on hold. Ingram is technically still on the team. Gradey Dick is still practicing with them. Their front office cannot make other moves until they know what pieces they actually have.
The Aspiration case matters more than just this trade. If the NBA finds real cap circumvention, the punishment could be huge. Precedent is limited but the league has previously used draft pick forfeitures and fines. The Timberwolves lost picks in the Joe Smith case. The Wolves did not have a Leonard on the roster at the time.
Silver has been careful about this whole process, which is normal for the league office. But careful and slow is a bad combination when two teams are trying to run offseason plans and there is a July trading window nobody wants to miss.
The likely outcome is a compromise. The league finds some level of violation, punishes the Clippers with draft picks or fines, and clears Leonard to move without personal penalty. That is the cleanest way out for everyone. Nobody wants a season starting without Kawhi in the lineup somewhere.
If the league drags this out any longer, the trade could technically die. Both sides might renegotiate terms. Both sides might rethink their positions. Toronto especially could get cold feet if Ingram plays well in October.
The clock is ticking. So is the pressure on Adam Silver’s office. Get it done.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
