Raptors' Kawhi Leonard-Brandon Ingram trade delay creates incredibly awkward possibility

Raptors’ Kawhi Leonard-Brandon Ingram trade delay creates incredibly awkward possibility originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Kawhi Leonard trade is still pending.

The Los Angeles Clippers and Toronto Raptors agreed to a deal, one that is headlined in the other direction by sending Brandon Ingram to L.A. 

But if the NBA’s investigative process around Leonard doesn’t hurry up, an incredibly awkward situation is possible.

There’s a chance this trade is still pending when the season starts. 

And if that’s the case, Ingram could be healthy and able to play for the Raptors, the team that is trying to trade him for Leonard.

“Seemingly, the only pathways to an expeditious resolution are if the investigation produces no evidence of wrongdoing — can you imagine if, after all this time, Wachtell comes back and says, ‘We got nothing?’ — or if Steve Ballmer and the Clippers basically ‘plea bargain’ to certain penalties and don’t go through the remaining steps of the process,” The Athletic’s John Hollinger wrote recently. “So how does this get resolved? And can the Clippers and Raptors get their Leonard trade to the finish line before the season starts? It certainly seems at least possible that we have a limbo situation where Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick are still technically Raptors when training camp starts in October, and Leonard is still technically a Clipper.”

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If the trade still had a good chance of happening, it’s hard to believe the teams would actually play those players at that point. They couldn’t risk injury.

But it has the potential to be very confusing.

“Meanwhile, some of the potential penalties the league might impose on the Clippers are basically dying on the vine,” Hollinger writes. “Voiding Leonard’s contract seems like less of a penalty when there’s only one year left on it. It also would be hugely distorting to the rest of the league now that all the cap room is gone, in a way that wouldn’t have been had the decision been made in, say, May. The best Clippers asset that could have been stripped was the fifth pick in the 2026 draft, which has now been used on Keaton Wagler. Forfeiture of future Clipper draft picks (Indiana’s in 2029 and their own from 2030 to 2033) would remain on the table, obviously; Silver can still drop the hammer if he deems it appropriate.”

There definitely hasn’t been a situation like this in the NBA before.

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