Recently, the Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard came under fire after reports surfaced that Leonard had signed a lucrative no-show deal with the since-bankrupt company Aspiration to help Los Angeles circumvent the NBA salary cap. Now it has emerged that Leonard and his uncle allegedly have been looking for such a deal for quite some time, dating back to his days with the Toronto Raptors, whom he left in free agency during the 2019 offseason.
“In 2019, Kawhi Leonard’s uncle asked the Raptors for a piece of the Leafs and a Paul George trade but also for two big extras: no-show sponsorships and ownership shares in outside companies, which he seems to have gotten with Aspiration, and the Clippers,” reported Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star on X, formerly Twitter.
Libaan Osman of the Toronto Star then confirmed on his own X account that it was indeed a “$10-million-a-year no-show sponsorship deal to stay with the Raptors.”
The Raptors were evidently unwilling to provide such a deal, and Leonard bolted for Los Angeles, where he himself has yet to play a game outside the second round.
The decision was controversial during the 2019 offseason considering that Leonard and the Raptors had just won the NBA championship less than a month earlier, but now it appears that many more factors were at play than just basketball and standard contract negotiations.
An interesting decision for the Raptors
The Toronto Raptors' decision to stay on the ethical side of things may have kept them out of hot water in the present day, but it certainly didn't help them from a basketball perspective.
Toronto made it to the second round of the playoffs the year after Leonard left but has yet to reach that point since then and has now positioned themselves to be one of the most expensive rosters in the NBA while simultaneously not figuring to be very competitive in the upcoming season.
Still, it's certainly possible that had they kept Leonard around, the same injury troubles that have tormented him during his stay with the Clippers would have shown up in Toronto as well.
