LAS VEGAS — The majority of NBA team personnel, agents and various other league officials descended upon Sin City in time for Thursday’s headline clash between No. 1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa’s Washington Wizards and No. 2 pick Darryn Peterson’s Utah Jazz.
Yet the true Day 1 thunderbolt that shook the league as the desert’s annual 11-day run of summer hoops tipped off was unmistakably traced to Olympic Tower across the country. Just as play at the storied Thomas & Mack Center was about to begin, both the LA Clippers and Toronto Raptors almost simultaneously announced that their long-agreed-to trade to send Kawhi Leonard back across the border to Canada has been placed on an indefinite hold.
Once the Raptors were informed this week that they would have to live with any potential penalties doled out to Leonard himself — in the event that the ongoing league-commissioned investigation into allegations of salary cap circumvention against the Clippers steers the league to extend sanctions onto the player — Toronto conceded that it has no choice but to wait now for the investigation to be completed before it can re-acquire Leonard safely.
There’s obviously loads to untangle now about a megatrade that had appeared destined for completion, but the main summary — as we explained on the arena concourse during a Bleacher Report livestream — is this:
Both the Clippers and Raptors believe that their seismic Kawhi deal will ultimately go through as intended.
How soon though?
And what happens next?
And how much doubt has actually been injected into the process by this unforeseen pause after Leonard was already back in Toronto’s building for Kyle Lowry’s retirement announcement?
Let’s tackle all of that here as well as some other new free agency (and restricted free agency) developments:
The Clippers explored Leonard’s trade market for weeks, sources say, before coming to terms on a deal with Toronto.
And …
