The Kawhi Leonard Clippers scandal won’t heal Spurs fans’ old wounds
The NBA concluded its investigation into the Clippers circumventing the cap to offer Kawhi Leonard more money than they were allowed, found proof of malfeasance, and came down hard on the franchise by docking five first-round picks, levying a $ 30 million fine on Steve Ballmer, and suspending the owner and other executives. The Clippers have denied any wrongdoing and want to fight the decision.
On the Leonard side, the punishment wasn’t as severe. Kawhi was fined $700,000, and his uncle and former manager, Dennis Robertson, has been banned from engaging any team on behalf of any employee for five years. Leonard released a statement in which he didn’t admit to any wrongdoing by himself, but accepted responsibility for the mistakes of his inner circle.
It was an interesting and somewhat unexpected conclusion to a year-long saga that began when journalist Pablo Torre brought to light initial evidence of cap circumvention, prompting Ballmer to deny any wrongdoing in an ESPN interview and forcing the league to launch the investigation. Those who followed the subsequent podcasts from Torre about the topic were likely convinced the Clippers and Leonard had broken the rules, but whether the league would reach the same conclusion and actually punish the parties involved wasn’t as clear. In the end, the result of the official investigation was enough for Adam Silver to drop the hammer on the Clippers.
Leonard, meanwhile, escapes largely unscathed. The fine is tiny compared to the under-the-table money he reportedly got. His contract won’t be voided, so he’ll land in Toronto, where he might get an extension and play out the last few years of his career before entering the Hall of Fame. This entire situation will not destroy his reputation, as the franchise and Uncle Dennis will be the ones blamed for it all while Kawhi will be painted as a largely innocent party to it. Spurs fans looking for some cathartic comeuppance can’t possibly be satisfied, since nothing significant actually happened to the targets of their persistent rage.
Let’s start with Uncle Dennis. The fact that Robertson has been banned from doing business with the NBA for five years is immaterial. Kawhi was his only customer, and he already benefited as much as he possibly could from his sloppy rule-breaking. He can’t do any more damage now, but he had plenty of time before. As for his future as an agent or business manager for NBA players, it’s unlikely Uncle Dennis wanted one, but even if he did, he might still have one. Robertson never cared about his reputation, which was terrible from the second he became a public figure, so the confirmation that he was actually doing all the shady things many people from different franchises said he had done in the past won’t dissuade anyone who wanted to be represented by him in the first place. No one who has been paying attention is surprised by any of what the investigation proved.
As for Leonard himself, as mentioned, he will be fine. Kawhi will largely be shielded from criticism, as he has normally been. After all, Leonard recently fired his uncle (a fact that ESPN’s Sham Charania made sure to include in his breaking news tweet) and has now indirectly condemned him in his statement. The notion that Leonard, the beneficiary of Robertson’s behaviour, conveniently became aware that his business manager was not following the rules when the walls were finally closing in on the operation, but never before, is laughable. But Dennis is a more interesting character, and Kawhi is still good at basketball, so he’ll probably get a pass from most people, as he has in the past when a large part of the media made jokes about the obvious dishonesty of his representation but rarely seriously discussed it.
Ultimately, Uncle Dennis and Leonard have won, as The San Antonio Express-News’ Mike Finger explains in his insightful opinion piece. Robertson accomplished what he set out to do: extract as much money from people who wanted his nephew on their team in any way he could while making sure Kawhi played where he wanted to and where he was allowed to have preferential treatment. For his part, Kawhi got to benefit from his uncle not only getting him what he wanted by any means necessary but also shielding him from the type of scrutiny any other superstar would have gotten with all the noise surrounding the business side of his career.
A lot of Spurs fans have moved on from the Leonard fiasco from eight years ago and won’t really care about what happened with this incident, but not all. Unfortunately, for those who were still looking for some form of karmic punishment for Leonard and his uncle after the painful, destructive way they left the franchise, there’s simply not much vindication to be found in the results of the investigation or joy in the consequences that followed. It might be time to accept that the boos Leonard gets when he visits San Antonio are as good as it’s going to get when it comes to catharsis.
