In the wake of the NBA handing down a landmark ruling against the LA Clippers and forward Kawhi Leonard for salary cap circumvention, Stephen A. Smith launched a scathing critique of the team and the 2x Finals MVP. Reacting to the league’s penalties, which included a $700,000 fine for Leonard, a $30 million fine for the franchise, and the forfeiture of five future first-round draft picks, Smith argued that Leonard ultimately escaped true accountability given his tumultuous tenure in Los Angeles.
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“Let me get a couple of things out of the way. Number one, Kawhi Leonard got off easy. $700,000 in restitution. Ladies and gentlemen, he owes tens of millions of dollars for the amount of time he’s taken off work,” Smith declared. “I mean, I’m going to say it one more time for y’all to understand the magnitude. Listen, Kawhi Leonard should give master classes on how to get paid for not working. This brother has missed more action than a little bit, and it’s got his fingerprints written all over it.”
Smith spared no venom for Leonard’s business manager and uncle, Dennis Robertson, who was hit with a five-year ban from NBA activities by the league office.
“Now, I know his uncle, Dennis Robertson, has been banned. It should be for life. It should be for life, because this man, as Jeanie Buss has intimated in the past with the Los Angeles Lakers, as numerous people have intimated, having done business with him, he doesn’t mind cutting corners and circumventing whatever rules or regulations. Clearly, not just to pad Kawhi Leonard’s pockets, but his own.”
He spent the 20-minute video slamming every person involved in this saga, including the Clippers’ president of basketball operations, Lawrence Frank.
But a significant portion was dedicated to calling out Leonard, declaring, “He is the absolute worst superstar in the history of American sports because he never did anything to promote the game.“
SAS blames it on Kawhi’s famously quiet media approach, which apparently shielded him from public backlash despite his being the ultimate beneficiary of these off-court dealings.
“See, this is where getting away, where you don’t do quotes, and you don’t get quoted, and you don’t do business. This is how Kawhi Leonard gets away with being so damn quiet. He never says anything. Everybody, his name just flies over it. Well, he was the one benefiting the most… I don’t think it’s painful enough for Kawhi Leonard.”
Beyond the financial misconduct uncovered by the league’s independent investigation into companies like Aspiration and Daktronics, Smith highlighted how Leonard allegedly leveraged the franchise during his 2019 free agency stint. When he was on his way out of Toronto, the Lakers were frontrunners to land him. Knowing the Clippers were eager to step out of the shadow of the Los Angeles Lakers, some speculate that Leonard’s dangled that insecurity in front of the Clippers.
“Knowing that they’re the fair-weather stepchild to the Los Angeles Lakers in Southern California, knowing that he had them by the — you know what — Kawhi Leonard went to the Los Angeles Clippers and blackmailed them into getting a dude he didn’t even have much of a relationship with in Paul George,” Smith stated.
“If you want to get me to come near via free agency from Toronto, go get Paul George or I’m going to the Lakers. Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers couldn’t allow that. So what did they do? They gave up the farm to get Kawhi Leonard. Ladies and gentlemen, five first-round picks, two swaps, plus Danilo Gallinari and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.”
Well the Lakers got the chip without Kawhi the next year. Smith pointed to the long-term roster devastation caused by that ultimatum due Leonard’s spotty availability and the meteoric rise of Gilgeous-Alexander into an NBA champion and 2x MVP.
“Do you realize who we’re talking about with ‘Shai Butter,’ Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, one of the top three basketball players on the planet? That brother, he was in a Clippers uniform,” Smith emphasized. “And Kawhi Leonard compelled them to move him just to get his boy Paul George, who wasn’t really his boy.”
Smith concluded his rant by demanding that the NBA strip Leonard of all illicit financial gains, insisting that a $700,000 restitution fee was a mere slap on the wrist compared to the reported $28 million generated through impermissible side deals.
“I personally believe that if he ended up collecting about $28 million from those endorsement deals with Aspiration that served to circumvent the cap, I think he should have to pay every penny of those dollars back… You circumvent those rules and regulations, damn it, your a– need to pay the price. Period.”