Mark Cuban can keep claiming Kawhi Leonard’s innocence in the Aspiration ‘No-show’ scandal, but every time a new story comes on about the former NBA champion’s demands during the 2019 free agency, the public perception swings a little towards guilty. Case in point, a new report by ESPN reveals that the Clippers star had some rather outrageous demands during the 2019 free agency gold rush.
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The summer of 2019 was a significant period for player movement in the NBA, with stars like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant joining the Brooklyn Nets. Leonard himself joined Paul George in LA’s second team, the Nets traded D’Angelo Russell to the Warriors. Suffice to say, the front offices kept busy, as did the lawyers and players’ managers.
Leonard was especially enjoying the hustle, having just won the NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors after defeating back-to-back champions Golden State Warriors in 6 games. Let’s just put it this way. He could have asked for a piece of the moon, and the Clippers brass would have crawled on broken glass to get it done. Because if they didn’t, someone else would have.
According to reports, on July 5, 2019, Clippers executives sat for a meeting, worried that Leonard, with whom they had met just 4 days prior, would pass on them and instead look for greener pastures over at the LA Lakers. By this point, they had already set wheels in motion to get Paul George, at Leonard’s request. Ultimately, they ended up giving Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, five first-round picks, and two first-round pick swaps for George.
Weirdly enough, that wasn’t the only demand on the Clippers’ front desk. The demands came from Leonard’s camp, led by his uncle Dennis Robertson. The list of these demands, made verbally, of course, included part ownership of the team, a house, a guarantee of money from endorsements, and a private plane.
These demands fell outside the boundaries of the league’s collective bargaining agreement and were not agreed to by the Clippers. However, Leonard’s camps had some more demands, which the Clippers agreed to.
His uncle laid out demands, wanting Leonard to be able to initially live in San Diego rather than in LA, and to commute via helicopter daily. The Clippers agreed. He wanted Leonard to be able to skip some media obligations and team community events. Dennis wanted the team to promise to market Leonard individually. He wanted Leonard to be able to bring some of his own people into the organization. The Clippers agreed to all of these.
Perhaps most importantly, Robertson said there would need to be a strict protocol about how to talk about Leonard publicly, and that was to say nothing unless necessary.
According to reports, Leonard’s uncle had made the exact same demands to the LA Lakers and the Toronto Raptors as well.
ESPN does claim that a team source disputes the existence of some of these demands while objecting to the tone of others. That said, it doesn’t look well for Leonard, does it? However, at the time, all of these remain reports, which will still need to be substantiated by the team leading the NBA investigation into the Steve Ballmer-Kawhi Leonard scandal.
