After months and months of waiting amid radio silence, the NBA has finally come to a decision on the Los Angeles Clippers-Kawhi Leonard salary cap circumvention saga — and it's no exaggeration to say it's literally unprecedented in league history. According to a league statement, Adam Silver is dropping the hammer: The Clips must forfeit five first-round picks, one per year beginning in 2029, in addition to a year-long suspension for owner Steve Ballmer, a six-month suspension for president Lawrence Frank and a whopping $30 million fine. (Leonard for his part, will have to cough up ... $700,000.)
Again, this is a punishment we've scarcely ever seen in a major sport before, the result of what the NBA deemed "a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization" uncovered by the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. That investigation clearly found enough to convince the league that Los Angeles had knowingly circumvented the salary cap, and that was a line that Silver wanted to make sure no team would ever cross again.
The ramifications of that decision are obviously far-reaching, both for Leonard and the league at large. In the immediate term, though, the takeaway is clear: The Clippers are, in a basketball sense, screwed.
Complete list of Clippers future draft picks after Kawhi Leonard punishment
Silver's most significant move was to dock L.A. a total of five first-round picks, one per year starting with the 2029 draft. The cupboard isn't entirely bare thanks to the trade earlier this summer sending Leonard back to the Toronto Raptors — a deal that can now finally go through, given that Leonard won't be facing any sort of suspension. But the Clippers' outlook, considering their current roster and future assets, is now among the bleakest in the NBA.
Year | First-round picks | Second-round picks |
|---|---|---|
2027 | 1 (OKC can swap OKC or DEN first, top-five protected, to LAC, LAC can then swap with TOR) | N/A |
2028 | N/A | 1 (via DAL) |
2029 | 1 (lesser of PHI and LAC) | N/A |
2030 | N/A | 1 (via TOR) |
2031 | 1 (via TOR) | 1 |
2032 | N/A | 1 |
2033 | 1 (via TOR) | 2 (1 via TOR) |
The Clippers won't feel the effects until 2029, but they were already out their first-round pick in 2028 from the James Harden trade, and the Oklahoma City Thunder can swap the lesser of either their own first-rounder or Denver's in 2027 thanks to the Paul George deal. That means Los Angeles has just one first-round pick over the next two years, and it'll likely fall somewhere in the 20s — and again, that's before the Leonard punishment kicks in.
From there, things only get worse. We don't yet know which of the Clips' two first-rounders in 2029 will be stripped, but we can assume that it'll be the pick they got from the Pacers in the Ivica Zubac deal, given that Philly has swap rights with L.A.'s own first-round pick that year. Their lone first-rounders in both 2030 and 2032 are gone, though they'll still have picks in the first round in 2031 and 2033 from Toronto thanks to the Leonard trade.
Under normal circumstances, four first-round picks over the next seven years wouldn't be awful; certainly other teams have less capital to deal with. But the Clippers were supposed to be stockpiling assets right now — hence the decision to flip both Harden and Zubac before last year's deadline and reorient around Darius Garland and 2026 first-round pick Keaton Wagler. This is a team very much in transition, one still in the process of laying the foundation of its next era of contention. That process just got much, much harder now, given the relative dearth of draft picks at their disposal and the fact that they'e already gotten rid of all of their significant trade assets.
Add us as a preferred source on Google