Stephen A. Smith Pushes For Kawhi Leonard's Suspension Amid New Salary Cap Circumvention Allegations
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Stephen A. Smith recently sat down with Pablo Torre, the sports investigator who revealed the latest update alleging that Kawhi Leonard had another ‘multimillion-dollar’ deal with the Clippers’ scoreboard maker, Daktronics, that suggests the Clippers superstar is likely guilty of knowingly circumventing the salary cap rules.
On the latest episode of his show, ‘Stephen A. Smith Sports’ in collaboration with ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’, Smith urged the NBA to impose severe penalties not just on the Clippers but also on Kawhi Leonard.
If these allegations are true, Smith went as far as to say the league should suspend Kawhi Leonard for at least the next whole season.
Pablo Torre was explaining that voiding the contract would also have the reverse effect of immediately making Kawhi Leonard a free agent, which arguably leaves room for him to still earn significantly despite being found guilty of wrongdoing.
Therefore, Stephen A. Smith agrees that a suspension for Kawhi Leonard is an important addition to the list of punishments that a presumably guilty Kawhi Leonard could face.
“Well, vaporizing the deal is not good enough. If he’s guilty of this, vaporizing the deal isn’t good enough because you just leave him out there on the free agent market and somebody can gobble him up and pay him.”
“You gotta suspend; you gotta attach a suspension with that vaporization of the deal to make sure that ramifications are truly, truly felt,” Smith said.
Torre dove into how Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard’s representation are both multiple-time offenders if these allegations are true. Stephen A. Smith then predicted that the aftermath of the potential punishments that could be imposed on the parties involved.
“If this is true, and obviously there appears to be no reason to doubt it. Excellent reporting on your part, Pablo. Bottom line is this. If you’re the NBA, you vaporize the contract of Kawhi Leonard. And in the same breath, not only do you do that, but you suspend them.”
“You suspend them, and you don’t allow him to play for the next year. You confiscate draft picks from the Clippers, but you also suspend Steve Balmer from appearing at games.”
“I can’t imagine Adam Silver going that far, but this may call for that because you know what everybody’s going to think if this stuff is true.”
“People are going to say Kawhi Leonard is this is this is who it happened for. There’s no way that this has happened for a bevy of players around the NBA. You know that’s what’s next. You know that, right?”
Earlier in the show, when Torre had not joined him, Smith spoke his mind about Kawhi Leonard’s tendencies. He also pointed to a pattern that goes back to Leonard’s free agency after the 2019 NBA championship with the Raptors.
“Leonard accepted slightly less than the full max to provide the Clippers additional financial flexibility. And I guess we’re supposed to applaud him for that.”
“This is the same dude that blackmailed the Clippers. This is the same dude that in July of 2019 arrived only after telling them, ‘get Paul George or else, or else I’m going to take my talents to the Los Angeles Lakers.'”
“And because of that, the Clippers ended up trading about four or five picks along with Danilo Gallinari and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to get Kawhi Leonard to come on board.”
“Keep that in mind. Keep that in mind. These are the kind of things that you have to pay attention to when you’re thinking about Kawhi Leonard,” Smith said.
“And inexplicably, for some reason, the Los Angeles Clippers still made it a point to pay in one contract after another after another despite about 30+% games missed.”
“30+% of his games missed during the regular season and just as much, if not even more, during the postseason. They still haven’t been to an NBA Finals. The conference finals that they went to against Phoenix years ago in 2021 were without him because he was hurt again.”
“And somehow, someway he’s milked the franchise for all it’s worth. I have said this before, and I’ll say this again. You want the definition of a master class? Let me tell you something. Kawhi Leonard getting paid without going to work. That brother could give lessons. He could give lessons.”
“I mean, he’s spectacular with that stuff. He’s spectacular. I mean, he’s so good at it. I want to get lessons from him myself, and I like working. But my god, the time this man gets off. And then to turn around and to still get paid and to still get one new contract after another after another, that’s bad enough.”
“But then when you hear that you got deals on the side that allowed the salary cap to be circumvented, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the big story here. Because guess what it means? If it started with him or it happened with him, chances are it didn’t start with him. Chances are something’s going on.”
“And it can open a whole Pandora’s box involving the NBA that’s going to be uncomfortable for everybody to see. An anonymous source told Pablo Torre that this money was 1000% to circumvent the salary cap. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi Leonard,” Smith said.
In his six seasons with the Clippers so far, Leonard has averaged 25.1 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 4.1 assists while shooting 50.3% from the floor and 39.9% from behind the three-point line.
But the noteworthy part is that Leonard played only 331 out of the 554 potential regular season games since he joined the Clippers, which means he missed a little over 40% of his potential regular season games and still managed to guarantee a $320 million+ valued contract from them.
It is evident that while we don’t know if Kawhi Leonard is truly guilty or not, all signs indicate that he might be, which has inclined Stephen A. Smith to take this strong stance against him.
If the integrity of the league is in question here, Adam Silver should be bringing down the hammer upon the guilty parties. Otherwise, there is no deterrent factor coming into play that stops teams or players from repeating this in the future.