Add The California Post on Google In the summer of 2019, the Los Angeles Clippers grabbed every single chip they could find and pushed them into the middle of the table.
The result was Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and a revamped roster ready to compete for an NBA championship. A complete transformation of the team and superstars to put on the marquee.
But in the NBA, when you go all-in to win a championship in the present, there’s always a price to pay down the road.
And now somebody has come to collect and count those chips.
The total cost to sign Leonard and trade for George is almost impossible to comprehend: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, five first-round picks sent to Oklahoma City, two first-round pick swaps, another five first-round picks forfeited to the NBA and a $30 million dollar fine.
Oh, and toss in Danilo Gallinari, multiple front-office executives suspended — including the team owner in Steve Ballmer — and the fact that one of those picks to OKC became Jalen Williams, and what once looked like the greatest night in Clippers history has now aged like milk under the boiling Southern California sun.
All that for one Western Conference Finals appearance and still zero NBA championships in franchise history.
The Clippers technically signed Leonard as a free agent in July 2019, but by acquiring George from the Thunder, they lost out on four unprotected first-round picks, a future MVP in SGA and several players. Leonard was the one who reportedly wanted George, and made it a condition of his signing with Los Angeles.
That signing, and ultimately his re-signing in 2021, has now made us all look back on this controversy under a microscope.
The Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard gamble cost the team $30 million and an ultimate 10 first-round picks. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post The total cost to sign Leonard and trade for Paul George is almost impossible to comprehend, costing the Clippers future superstar Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Noah K. Murray-NY Post The NBA concluded Wednesday that the Clippers and Leonard violated the league’s salary-cap circumvention rules, hammering LA with the forfeiture of five more first-round picks — 2029 through 2033 — and a $30 million fine. Ballmer was suspended for one year, president of business operations Gillian Zucker for one year without pay and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank for six months. Meanwhile, Leonard was fined $700,000.
Put everything together and the Leonard pursuit can reasonably be framed this way: 10 first-round picks lost, two additional first-round pick swaps, 2024 & 2025 MVP Gilgeous-Alexander, Gallinari, $30 million dollars and multiple suspensions.
Of course, the human cost of that 2019 roll of the dice by Ballmer and the Clippers looks even worse.
Gilgeous-Alexander became a superstar. Williams became an All-Star-caliber cornerstone. George eventually left Los Angeles without delivering a championship. Leonard’s Clippers tenure became defined as much by injuries and postseason absences as the brilliance that convinced Ballmer to mortgage the future for him in the first place.
There once was a time when the Clippers could defend the price they paid. Leonard was fresh off an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors, taking down the Golden State Warriors dynasty in the process. George was once an MVP finalist and from LA. For perhaps the first time in franchise history, the Clippers appeared to have assembled the perfect superstar pairing since Shaq and Kobe.
But they never reached their full potential; their high-water mark was the 2021 Western Conference Finals, reached after Leonard tore his ACL and never even played in the series.
Now the final accounting of that 2019 summer looks like something pulled from an NBA horror story.
And not a single NBA Finals game to show for it.
Seven years ago, the Clippers swung for the fences.
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