One of the biggest trades of the NBA offseason — the Toronto Raptors re-acquiring Kawhi Leonard — remains on pause due to the NBA’s ongoing investigation into allegations the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the salary cap through a no-show sponsorship deal between Leonard and the since-shuttered carbon credits company Aspiration.
The investigation into Leonard and the Clippers began 10 months ago and most anticipated a resolution before this offseason. But the start of the new league year came and went without any official updates on the investigation or a potential punishment for all parties. The Raptors and Clippers both released statements last week after putting the trade on hold, as Toronto was informed by the NBA that it would assume the risk of any potential punishment levied against Leonard.
On Tuesday, The Athletic reported that the Leonard investigation has been delayed and “grown in scope” to include other improper expenses provided by the Clippers to Leonard, as well as a possible second unreported endorsement deal with a different company:
While the LA Clippers, Leonard and now the Raptors all wait for a conclusion, the investigation has grown in scope since it began, according to multiple sources who spoke to The Athletic on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely. Not only has Wachtell Lipton, the league’s go-to law firm hired to conduct the inquiry, inspected if the Clippers circumvented the NBA salary cap by facilitating a sponsorship deal for Leonard with Aspiration, it has also looked into whether the Clippers improperly covered expenses for Leonard but were not reimbursed for them, those sources said. And the firm has examined if Leonard had a previously unreported endorsement deal with another company, those sources said.
That’s a notable update and provides some context for why the investigation hasn’t reached its conclusion yet. NBA commissioner Adam Silver is scheduled to speak on Tuesday after the NBA Board of Governors meets in Las Vegas, and the status of the Leonard investigation will undoubtedly be one of the first questions asked.
Kawhi Leonard trade on hold: What’s next as Raptors, Clippers await results of NBA investigation
Sam Quinn
Before Game 1 of the NBA Finals last month, Silver said the league hoped the investigation would soon conclude.
“The investigation has been conducted by a law firm independent of the NBA,” Silver said. “Yes, ultimately we’re paying their bills, but they are doing the work independent of the league office, and my instruction to them is we can’t be investigating forever, but at some point, we have to wrap it up. But at the same time, the most important thing is that we get it right.
“I think it’s clear they’re far along. I think those reports are reading all the time from people who are being interviewed by them, and I think they understand that you can keep going on and on. But I think we’re close to the point now where I think we need to wrap this up because you also need finality. Their team has to understand what the situation is they’re going to be operating under, and so do the other 29 teams.”
As it pertains to the Aspiration portion of the investigation, The Athletic uncovered images of a scrapped marketing campaign for Leonard that cast him as a character similar to Marvel’s Groot, tying his interest in comics to the company’s pledge to plant trees to offset carbon footprints.
That ill-fated campaign never got off the ground, but it does provide at least some evidence of an effort to make Leonard’s partnership with Aspiration publicly known. Why that didn’t come to fruition will be of interest to the league’s investigation, with a former employee telling The Athletic they were told to “stop thinking about Kawhi, this feels like a dead end.”
The Clippers said they “expect the [Leonard] trade to be finalized” once the investigation is complete. The team said it has “fully cooperated” by “participating in dozens of interviews, providing tens of thousands of documents, and facilitating access to our staff.”
“While the process has been challenging, we have remained committed to transparency,” the team said.
