Clippers fans, please join the rest of L.A. in booing Kawhi Leonard.
With your whole chests, let him hear it, the entitled scoundrel.
Greedy villain.
Selfish charlatan.
The Clippers’ star and his team found the one NBA franchise that was desperate enough to allegedly acquiesce to all of his out-of-bounds demands, to break the rules if only he would please, please pick them.
Yearning to be loved in the Lakers’ Los Angeles, the Clippers were easy marks during that 2019 free agency.
Leonard, fresh off winning his second NBA title and Finals MVP, took the Clippers and Steve Ballmer — the NBA’s richest owner, worth $152 billion, per Forbes — for a ride.
Read more: Plaschke: NBA drops the hammer on The Cheatin’ Clippers, and they can’t shed the stink
Investigators have found that Leonard’s camp got the Clippers to agree, according to the findings of a nearly yearlong investigation by Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, to audacious levels of salary cap circumvention.
Billed as a hometown hero, the All-Star from Moreno Valley apparently arrived with his hand outstretched, demanding all sorts of improper perks, including an extra $10 million annually — in addition to the above-board contracts that paid him between $32 million and $50 million each season.
And then he did his Kawhi laugh all the way to the bank.
Now tack on the NBA’s $30-million fine and five first-round draft picks to the bill as punishment, announced Wednesday.
Those fans in Toronto who’d promised never to let him pay for a meal in their city again — “KaWine and Dine,” they called it — never stood a chance. They should toast their luck.
The Clippers doth protest, denying all of it. Probably because the investigation’s findings make them out to be not only cheaters, but fools.
The team’s statement: “We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.”
And Leonard? He isn’t taking personal accountability, but he’s accepting the NBA’s $700,000 fine and, in a statement, said he blames “lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle.”
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer congratulates Kawhi Leonard after he scored 55 points in December at Intuit Dome. (Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
His excuse: Everyone has a crazy uncle, right?
Leonard’s statement concluded by referencing the pending trade sending him back to the Raptors, which was put on hold in July: “As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate.”
A clean slate? He plans to pay the fine — roughly one game’s worth of pay — pass go and roll the dice again like nothing happened. A top 50 player of all time and a Hall of Fame scam artist, this fun guy.
Who knows what deliverables he promised, but all he wrought was more frustration and misery for the team’s long-suffering, loyal fans.
For his seven seasons with the Clippers, he was a part-time worker getting paid excessive overtime.
Oft-injured, he played in only about 60% of the team’s regular-season games. Injuries stink, and so did the opacity with which the Clippers shared news of their star’s health status.
Load-of-nonsense management.
Read more: NBA hammers Clippers, Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard following investigation
With a wish list so long even Santa would’ve pushed back, he also demanded the Clippers trade future MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and five first-round draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Paul George. Because Leonard wanted a proven running mate. That didn’t only set back the Clippers, it set up the young Thunder for at least one NBA title run.
The Clippers, meanwhile, still have not won an NBA title. Still haven’t played in an NBA Finals.
But together, Leonard and the team made history with Wednesday’s punishment.
The Clippers’ one Western Conference finals appearance in 2021? That came with Leonard in street clothes, nursing a torn anterior cruciate ligament, an injury the Clippers kept secret until it was announced later that summer that their star player had surgery to repair it.
A reticent, low-wattage star, Leonard did nothing to improve the Clippers’ brand or relevancy.
He did the opposite.
The Clippers were sold a lemon. And now all they’re left with is the sour, bitter taste of having been played.
Read more: Read the NBA’s investigation of the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard
The NBA handed Ballmer a suspension from all league and team activities for one year. Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker was hit with the same penalty. President of basketball operations Lawrence Frank will be suspended without pay for six months.
And the Clippers didn’t have to do any of it.
Was Leonard really going to go to another team?
He didn’t want to freeze in Toronto and he would have melted under the Lakers’ purple-and gold spotlight. He also wouldn’t have been able to play king on a team with LeBron James on it.
Leonard was meant to be a Clipper. He really was. The latest chapter in a story that always ends unhappily ever after.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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