After a year, the NBA has finally laid down its punishment to Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers. They lose five picks, Steve Ballmer and his front office get suspended, and Kawhi Leonard got fined a hefty(?) amount for his involvement. All in all, after the wait, the league did not go easy on the Clippers.
This doesn't have much to do with the Utah Jazz directly, but the fact that the league took as long as it did actually works out quite well for them. If the league had thoroughly investigated this matter and resolved it before last season started, it could have been a problem.
The Clippers would have been stripped of their picks, but Leonard's contract may have been voided (total speculation), which would have gotten in the way of the Jazz's tank. In fact, the fact that the NBA was so quick to punish Utah for their tanking while this Leonard scandal dragged its feet for so long was kind of annoying, but at least it never interfered with what the Jazz wanted to do.
But because this took a while, the Clippers continued to make a playoff push (which didn't succeed), so they were not a threat to the Jazz's goals (though there was a bit of a scare there at first).
Clippers won't be a threat going forward
After not being a threat to Utah's tank, now Los Angeles is on the verge of losing Leonard to the Raptors, which is a massive downgrade for them. It was already hard to see them truly competing this season after trading Leonard.
And now, they won't have their own first-round pick for seven years. They have a few from some of the deals they made, but it's not great. Point being, because they are stripped of ways to get better, they won't stand in the Jazz's way of going as far as they can into the playoffs.
Does that make the West any less of a warzone? That question doesn't need to be dignified with a response. It's just funny to see that the Clippers have inadvertently and unintentionally helped the Jazz by not getting in the way of their intentional losing, and now, they are on the opposite end of that.
It's poetic in a way because the Clippers were basically the ones that destroyed the Rudy Gobert-Donovan Mitchell Jazz teams for good in 2021, even if they didn't blow it up until the following season.
It's going to be a rough stretch for the Clips over the next several years, but if it makes them feel any better, the Jazz sort of know how that feels...
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