The Kawhi Leonard trade holdup is a mess the NBA should have seen coming

LAS VEGAS — The NBA loves player movement, and that was true long before the new collective bargaining agreement, with its punitive second apron, started encouraging more trades than ever.

When combined with the star power of the league’s best players, transactions allow the NBA to stay in the news almost year-round. August and September are usually quiet, but there have been some whoppers completed in late summer. The NBA capitalizes on that. There are always many moves, some of them seemingly out of nowhere, at this time of year.

The Kawhi Leonard trade — well, now an on-hold trade — did not come out of nowhere. It is stupefying, then, that the NBA was caught unprepared. The Luka Dončić trade in January 2025 was proof that any player could be traded at any time. Certainly, that would include Leonard, an older, injury-prone player whose contract is set to expire at the end of the 2026-27 season. The league should have been out in front of this. Instead, it appears it was reactive to trade talks, with the LA Clippers and Toronto Raptors down the road on negotiations before firmly stepping in.

To be clear, per sources briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league’s probe is ongoing, the NBA informed the Raptors several days before the deal was agreed on that they would be proceeding at their own risk. The Raptors would assume the risk for any penalties levied against Leonard (but not the Clippers) if the trade was completed and then Leonard’s contract was voided. If this trade does not go through, the Raptors should accept their share of the blame.

However, this situation should have been confronted months ago.

The league should feel responsible for two reasons. The first is not clarifying Leonard’s status the moment the NBA started the investigation into whether the Clippers circumvented the salary cap in retaining Leonard in 2021. Obviously, NBA commissioner Adam Silver was going to wait until law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz delivered its findings before deciding on what punishment the Clippers and/or Leonard could face. However, so long as there was a possibility Leonard’s contract would be voided — and why wouldn’t there be? — the NBA should have explicitly told the Clippers (and probably all 30 teams) that any team that traded for him would have to deal with the consequences Leonard received.

Undoubtedly, that would have undercut the Clippers’ leverage in any trade negotiations involving Leonard. Additionally, the National Basketball Players Association would surely have objected to limiting Leonard’s trade market, should it have an impact on where he might get another contract. However, teams are constantly assessing and reassessing their situations, especially as major transaction windows approach. At the trade deadline, the Clippers traded James Harden and Ivica Zubac for future-minded returns. You do not need to be an NBA devotee to understand the guy turning 35 whose contract is expiring might be next.

Teams should have had zero doubt about who would be on the hook if the league voided Leonard’s contract. In that sense, everyone is lucky the Clippers didn’t agree to trade Leonard on a more condensed timeline before the February deadline, when games were being played. At least now, during the offseason, there is time for teams to wait, especially with most of the league’s major business seemingly completed.

Still, if this thing goes sideways, there will have been an opportunity cost. If it was obvious Leonard’s status was in doubt, maybe the Raptors would have made more aggressive offers for the likes of LaMelo Ball, Jaylen Brown or another star who might have been pried away from his team. The Raptors obviously feel they are ready to make another move toward contending.

The Clippers might have approached things differently, too. If they had known Leonard’s trade value would nosedive because of the uncertainty surrounding the investigation, maybe they would have held on to their veteran players or sought slightly different returns for Harden and Zubac. Maybe they would have made the same moves regardless, sure, but they should have been able to understand their options with Leonard when they made those moves.

Which brings us to the second of the league’s missteps. Namely, why is this investigation not over yet?

Surely, the league shouldn’t be making rash rulings without as much information as can be gathered. However, this story started Sept. 3, when the initial “Pablo Torre Finds Out” episode about Aspiration and the Clippers, which has since won a Pulitzer Prize, was released. More than 10 months have passed.

It is not simple to track down sources, gather information and deliver a thorough report on any subject. However, this matter is not in the courts, which means there is no legal red tape the law firm should have had to confront in its efforts. Moreover, the NBA is a well-off client, and surely could have thrown a little more money at its chosen investigator to free up some more resources to speed up the process. There is no reason this investigation should not have been wrapped up for a while now.

The league should have felt not only urgency to get things right, but also to get them done quickly. It knows how competitive the league is in the age of parity and how much teams want to tinker if things don’t go according to plan. Only one team walks away from a season truly happy with the result. The Clippers didn’t win the title; in fact, they didn’t make the playoffs. Of course, they were going to explore roster changes. And Leonard was a clear impediment to the Clippers’ making a clean break with the past — or as clean a break as the results of the investigation allow them to make.

From the outside, it seems likely this trade will still happen, and Leonard will end up in Toronto. If that is the case, this will end up as a largely forgotten moment when confusion reigned and the involved parties looked silly but ultimately did not change the outcome of anything.

If the investigation yields harsher findings, and the league feels it is necessary to void Leonard’s contract, the Clippers, Raptors and Leonard will all feel aggrieved. And though the two teams did not need to agree to the trade once the league flagged the issue, nor did whoever leaked the deal’s “completion” need to go public, it is the league that could have taken that result off the table a long time ago. To whatever extent the league didn’t make this possibility clear months and months ago, it represents a staggering lack of foresight.