While the basketball world waits for the dust to settle on the ramifications of the league’s recently issued penalties for the Clippers in their salary cap circumvention investigation, there’s another piece of business that the embattled Los Angeles team will likely be attending to: the still-pending Kawhi Leonard trade to the Raptors.
The deal has, to this point, remained unfinalized as both teams waited to see what the fallout of the investigation would be, including whether or not Leonard’s contract would be impacted by the findings.
With the announcement today that the primary penalty for the two-time Finals MVP would be a $700K fine, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports that “everything is on track” for the deal to be made official (Twitter video link).
“This was the last piece of information that the Raptors were waiting on,” Charania reports. “The full expectation around the Raptors and around Kawhi Leonard and the league is that this trade will be going through in the next couple of days.”
In Leonard’s statement made after the league’s ruling on the Clippers was made public, the star wing spoke of the trade as if it were a done deal, saying: “As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate.”
The deal in question would send Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick back to the Clippers, along with the Raptors’ unprotected 2031 and 2033 first-round picks, second-round picks in 2030 and 2033, and a pick swap in 2027.
With L.A. being docked five first-round picks between 2029 and 2033, those Raptors picks could prove crucial to the team tries to rebuild in the wake of both the investigation and the only somewhat successful Leonard-Paul George era.