Why the NBA can't let Clippers slide on Kawhi Leonard allegations

Seven weeks ago, Victor Wembanyama did his franchise a favor. The 22-year-old center and the Spurs agreed to a massive five-year contract extension, albeit one that will pay him about $50 million less than he might have received if he sought the largest contract allowed by the NBA.

The significance of that discount can be hard to process. After all, to a hard-working stiff, the gap between making $252 million and $303 million is a lot like the gap between taking a rocket ship to the moon and one to Mars. Most of us recognize there’s a difference, but we’ll never come close to experiencing it firsthand.

In the realm of NBA team-building, though, salary-cap savings of $10 million per year can turn losses into victories. Theoretically, signing Wembanyama at that lower price point could enable the Spurs to add an extra veteran once extensions for Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper kick in. It might allow them to keep De’Aaron Fox an extra year. 

And if the Spurs play their cards right? Playoff trips that might otherwise have ended in the conference semifinals in 2028, 2029 or 2030 might turn into league championships, all because they had a little more flexibility to operate under the NBA’s punitive luxury-tax aprons.

So it’s possible to see how Wembanyama’s sacrifice might pay off. In fact, they just lost in the NBA Finals to a New York Knicks team that benefited from a similar contract discount by their star player, Jalen Brunson. 

But what if the Spurs were able to accomplish all of this, and still get Wembanyama his money anyway? What if they were able to use another project involving huge amounts of money – like, say, the construction of a new arena – to make sure their French star winds up with the extra $50 million he supposedly turned down? 

Don’t you think the rest of the league would have a problem with that? Don’t you think it would make a mockery of the rules that were supposed to give markets like San Antonio and Oklahoma City a fighting chance against Los Angeles and New York in the first place? And don’t you think it would feed into the perception that, since everybody seems to be cheating in one way or another, a league that tolerates it while embracing boatloads of gambling money might not be completely above board?

That’s why the Spurs never would be allowed to get away with something like that.

And it’s why the Los Angeles Clippers shouldn’t, either.

Opening day of the 2026-’27 NBA season is less than two months away, and commissioner Adam Silver repeatedly has said he wants the league’s probe into the Clippers’ alleged salary-cap circumvention with Kawhi Leonard resolved by then. Presumably, that means there will be a definitive end to this soon.

Based on all of the evidence uncovered by a Pulitzer Prize-winning string of episodes by investigative reporter Pablo Torre over the past year, Silver and the NBA should have no shortage of reasons to issue firm punishments.

Punishments of the Clippers and their owner, Steve Ballmer. Punishments of Leonard and his representatives. Punishments including voided contracts, fines, forfeited draft picks, and even suspensions.

None of that should be off the table unless the Clippers have a much better explanation than they’ve provided publicly for what sure looks like a brazen scheme to flout the rules meant to preserve the NBA’s competitive balance.

That imaginary Wembanyama scenario outlined above? Allegedly, that’s what the Clippers did with Leonard. They signed him to a below-market deal, giving them extra salary-cap room, right around the same time he allegedly agreed to huge (and mostly secret) endorsement deals with companies (Aspiration and Daktronics) that received millions of dollars from the Clippers.

As Torre noted, Leonard never did any apparent work for those companies. And while there is no incontrovertible proof that money went from Ballmer to Aspiration to Leonard as a way to skirt the salary cap, it sure looks like that’s what happened.

Still, there’s no smoking gun. And because Ballmer happens to be the richest owner in American professional sports, at a time when the NBA teams are being bought and sold by an undignified band of venture capitalists and overleveraged mortgage lenders, many remain skeptical the league will come down hard on him or his team.

It’s not as though his plan worked, right? Throughout the period when they allegedly were getting around the salary cap, the Clippers were mostly mediocre, and Leonard was mostly injured.

But ineptitude shouldn’t be an alibi, just as Ballmer’s billions shouldn’t make him untouchable. If the NBA wants to be taken seriously, it can’t let the Clippers slide on this.

If they wind up with a slap on the wrist? It only will feed into every ridiculous conspiracy theory about officiating, or about the draft lottery, or about how the league is in on the fix.

And in that case, the Spurs might as well get Wembanyama his money.

Maybe they can funnel it through H-E-B.

The only difference is, Wembanyama actually will do the commercials.