The Clippers, Kawhi Leonard and the most damaging swing-and-a-miss in NBA history

"This is a historic moment for our organization and our fans," Lawrence Frank said in a statement on July 10, 2019. And oh, man , does "historic" not even begin to cover it.

Frank, the president of basketball operations of the Los Angeles Clippers, delivered that cherry quote up near the top of the press release officially announcing the signing of marquee free-agent Kawhi Leonard — a two-time NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP, a three-time All-Star and All-NBA selection, a five-time All-Defensive teamer and former Defensive Player of the Year — to begin a bright, bold new era for the long moribund franchise.

(The second sentence of that statement, one that appears in virtually every team announcement of a contract signing, takes on a particularly rich tone today: "Per team policy, terms of the agreement were not released." I can't imagine why! )

A half-hour after they announced the Kawhi signing, the Clippers published a second statement trumpeting a trade for Paul George — a six-time All-Star, five-time All-NBA selection and five-time All-Defensive teamer, fresh off a third-place finish in MVP voting — to team with Leonard, a pair of hometown heroes joining forces to lead the Clips into that bright, bold future.

Frank's money quote from the PG press release read, in part: "When you have the opportunity to acquire a contributor of his caliber, you do what it takes to bring him home. [...] Following the lead of Steve Ballmer, we have plotted an aggressive course to build a championship contender."

On Wednesday, we learned just how aggressive a course the Clippers really charted , just what "you do what it takes to bring him home" really meant — and, with it, just how heavy a sanction NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was willing to levy on Ballmer, the richest of the 30 governors at whose pleasure he serves.

One day shy of a full year after Pablo Torre lit the fuse , the NBA finally published the results of the independent investigation conducted by the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz into whether the Clippers circumvented the salary cap. The findings — a "pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations" related to initiating, facilitating and inducing multiple off-the-books, off-court endorsement deals for Leonard with team sponsors — were explosive enough for Silver to decide to blow a hole straight through the franchise.

The league has docked the Clippers five first-round picks — in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033. If that staggering figure sounds familiar, it might be because it's in line with the punishment the NBA levied the last time it dealt with a case of salary-cap circumvention this dramatic and drastic, back in 2000, when the Minnesota Timberwolves were found to have agreed to "no fewer than five undisclosed contracts" with power forward Joe Smith in a long-range plan to eventually ink him to a monster contract.

The league later returned the Wolves' 2003 and 2005 first-round selections, after owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale accepted their suspensions and leaves of absence for their role in the scheme. It's possible, then, that the Clips could recoup some of the stripped assets … though, given the ferocity with which the team is raging against the league's findings and continuing to insist on its innocence, it might be a while before we see any kind of mea culpa that might make Silver start to feel generous.

Until and unless things change, then, a Clippers team that just finished 42-40, in ninth place and shy of the playoffs, just lost a half-decade's worth of draft capital. They're not wholly without picks, to be clear; due to the still-currently-on-hold shipment of Leonard back to Toronto, it appears they'll still be able to make selections of some type in 2027, 2029, 2031 and 2033 . That's it, though — four picks in the next seven years, none of them tradable.

As punishment for trying to run an end-around on the cap, Silver and Co. have severely hampered whatever efforts the Clippers might have had in mind for rebuilding around 26-year-old point guard Darius Garland and No. 5 overall draft pick Keaton Wagler. The lifeblood of any rebuilding effort, the raw materials that can be turned into cost-controlled young talent or packaged together for present-tense help: all but vaporized through 2034, a year that frankly seems too far away to even fathom right now.

Making matters worse, the clock can't even officially start on this particular strip-mining for three more years , thanks in part to the clock still running on the deals that kickstarted this whole endeavor. See, the Clips still owe swap rights on their 2027 first-rounder to the Oklahoma City Thunder, part of the long tail of the George trade. (They also owe their 2028 first to either the Celtics or 76ers, dating back to the James Harden deal, for those keeping score.)

As it stands, then, the right to pay Leonard (both within and beyond the restraints of the CBA) cost the Clippers control of 10 first-round picks — from 2022 through 2026 in the PG trade, and from 2029 through 2033 in Wednesday's penalty.

It also cost them Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — who, since the trade, has had a pretty good run of it: four All-Star berths, four All-NBA First Team nods, back-to-back Most Valuable Player trophies, an NBA championship, and a Finals MVP. (One of those Clipper picks also turned into Jalen Williams, an All-Star and All-NBA swingman who scored 40 points in a Finals game en route to Oklahoma City's first championship. You know, just so long as we're doing the accounting.)

And hey, while we're at it: It also cost them their integrity.

All year long, the Clippers repeatedly denied any impropriety, diminished Torre's ongoing reporting as mere "podcast claims," insisted that they would be exonerated when the results of the investigation came out. When the results of the investigation came out, they cried foul, claimed bias, railed against being railroaded.

All year long, those skeptical of Torre's reporting dismissed it as circumstantial, wondered aloud where the smoking gun actually was in all those folders and voice-modified interviews. The Wachtell Lipton report lays out in painstaking detail, among other things, evidence that the Clippers initiated and facilitated Leonard's endorsement arrangement with Aspiration, and the nature of the connection between Leonard's no-show deal and the broader arrangement between Aspiration and the Clippers, which Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg (who's since been convicted on fraud charges) tells Clippers executives in a number of incendiary text messages that he'll "burn to the ground" if certain conditions aren't met.

Whether or not you believe that constitutes a "smoking gun," the evidence that investigators turned up was "more than sufficient to establish the rules violations described."

"The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations," Silver said in the league's statement.

The net return on investment for all that this has cost the Clippers? The NBA's fourth-best regular-season winning percentage over the past seven years, three total playoff series wins (none since 2021) and one Western Conference finals appearance. Add it all up, and it's hard not to view this whole endeavor — the moving of heaven and earth to land Leonard and George, what it took to get them, and what it evidently took to keep Leonard (or at least Uncle Dennis) happy — as the costliest transaction in modern NBA history. The most damaging swing-and-a-miss of our time, and perhaps of all time.

The Uncle Dennis Robertson stuff ? All those reports that Kawhi's uncle and appointed representative had been asking for all sorts of impermissible benefits from prospective franchise suitors for nearly a decade ? That's corroborated in the investigation, with Uncle Dennis "banned from conducting business or otherwise engaging with NBA teams and their affiliates on behalf of or with respect to any player, employee, or other league or team personnel for a period of five years."

In a perhaps related story, two months ago Kawhi linked up with a new agent , Harrison Gaines, through whom Leonard released a statement on Wednesday in which he says, in part, "I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family." The NBA's statement noted that the league and the National Basketball Players Association "have entered into an agreement confirming these penalties are final and binding on all parties," suggesting that Leonard and the players' union won't be raising any stink over the outcome … which, considering it amounts on his end to a $700,000 fine, a clear path to finalize that long-paused return to Toronto, and no suspension or voiding of his existing contract (which the Raptors will almost assuredly be extending sometime soon), sounds about right.

The Clippers? They'll be raising a stink. Have already started, in fact — "vehemently rejecting" the investigators' findings , and insisting that they'll "vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available" to them. Multiple subsequent reports suggest there is no appeal or arbitration process available to them through the league, and that any challenge would have to come via the courts — where, it seems, the Clippers are ready to go , both to try to claw back whatever draft capital they can and, perhaps most importantly, to try to clean the smut off their owner's rep.

According to the summary of the investigation's findings released Wednesday, Ballmer "knowingly sought to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities and, in at least one instance, engaged in a significant act of team facilitation." That finding stands in contrast to Ballmer's insistence in an interview with ESPN's Ramona Shelburne last September that he had no knowledge of any such side dealings, and to an ESPN report published last week citing sources that said the investigation had turned up "no evidence [that] Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors" to Leonard. Shortly after the publication of that ESPN report, an NBA spokesman said that it contained "numerous and significant inaccuracies."

"Mr. Ballmer knowingly sought to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities and engaged in a significant act of facilitation through the Forum Agreement," the investigators wrote . "Mr. Ballmer also failed to supervise his most senior businessperson while she systematically violated NBA rules, and more generally permitted a culture in his organization that allowed for the initiation, facilitation, inducement, and potential funding of multiple endorsement agreements between Mr. Leonard and team partners."

For now, then, Ballmer gets a $30 million fine — tip money, relatively, to the 15th-richest person in the world . He gets barred from "all league and team activities for one year" — the part that likely really stings, to one of the most rabid, raucous and red-faced partisans among the league's courtside set.

And, for whatever it's worth, he gets tarred as a repeat violator of one of the league's most sacrosanct precepts. (The NBA's statement announcing the punishment made a point of highlighting the Clippers getting fined $250,000 in 2015 for violating these same rules through a presentation to then-free agent DeAndre Jordan "that improperly included a potential third-party endorsement opportunity for the player.") He's stamped as either an asleep-at-the-wheel governor unable to maintain the institutional control necessary to avoid such violations, or an unabashed cheat willing to turn a blind eye to misconduct if it improves his chances of keeping a superstar player happy. And given the divergence between the version of events he delivered on ESPN and the picture painted in the report, he comes away looking like a bald-faced liar.

"Mr. Ballmer's reputation has been irreparably damaged as he now finds himself embroiled not only in this heavily biased investigation, but in civil litigation, the Aspiration bankruptcy proceedings, and more," attorney David N. Kelley of the law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP wrote in a letter addressed to Silver that the Clippers delivered to the NBA on Wednesday. "It seems increasingly likely that Mr. Ballmer will spend years defending himself and the team against a podcaster's baseless claims."

The Pulitzer Prize and Edward R. Murrow Award suggested those "claims" weren't so "baseless" before Wednesday; now we know that the seemingly interminable investigation backs them up. The Clips and their counsel have this much right, though: The reputations of Ballmer and the Clippers have been damaged. What remains to be seen now is which comes first: the rehabilitation of those images, or the end of the Clippers' draft-pick death penalty.