The Clippers Still Have Not Signed the Kawhi Leonard Trade

The Los Angeles Clippers have still not signed the Kawhi Leonard trade to the Toronto Raptors. Marc Stein reported on Sept. 11 that the NBA is ready whenever both clubs pick up the phone.

The delay is no longer Toronto’s. It runs through the one Clippers owner still allowed to act as governor, and he is already inside the Aspiration file.

The League Says There Is No Holdup

Stein, writing from sources briefed on the file, said the clubs “are free at any time to co-submit for NBA approval their agreed-in-June Kawhi Leonard trade.” He added that both sides must want the trade call, and that “there is no holdup at league level.”

UPDATE: Sources briefed on the situation tell @TheSteinLine that the Clippers and Raptors are free at any time to co-submit for NBA approval their agreed-in-June Kawhi Leonard trade.

Obviously both teams must want the trade call but I’m told there is no holdup at league level. https://t.co/FMqZO4fPdq

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) September 11, 2026

That update landed nine days after the league finished its case. If the league office is clear, the remaining stall is a Clippers problem, and they have not named the person who will put a name on the paper.

People around the league have asked whether Los Angeles is simply refusing to help Leonard get to the city he asked for. The emptier fact is simpler. Steve Ballmer, Gillian Zucker, and Lawrence Frank are all barred from team business, and nobody new has been presented as governor.

Ingram, Dick and Two Unprotected Firsts

The deal itself is not a mystery. It was agreed on June 30, 2026, and the pieces have been public since that afternoon.

THE JUNE 30 PACKAGE

Those two unprotected firsts now do extra work. On Sept. 2 the NBA took the Clippers’ own first-round picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033. Completing this trade is how Los Angeles still collects a first in 2031 and 2033, and they would be Toronto’s, not the picks the league just erased.

Leonard turns toward an expiring year. He played 65 games last season after years of load-managed calendars, and he turns 35. Ingram averaged 21.5 points in 77 games in his first full Toronto season and made an All-Star team. Dick slid out of Darko Rajaković’s rotation. Toronto is buying a two-time Finals MVP who already won a title there in 2019. Los Angeles is buying a scorer, a young wing, and draft paper it suddenly cannot print for itself.

Toronto Hit Pause on July 9

The Raptors were the ones who stopped the clock first. They did it in public, with a statement, after the league told them they would inherit whatever the investigation did to Leonard.

HOW THE TRADE GOT STUCK

1. June 30, 2026: The Clippers and Raptors agree to send Leonard to Toronto for Ingram, Dick, two unprotected firsts, two seconds, and a 2027 swap.
2. July 9, 2026: Toronto pauses. The Raptors say the league office told them they “would assume the risk of any potential outcome of the investigation impacting Kawhi,” and that they will “wait until the league’s investigation is complete.”
3. Sept. 2, 2026: The NBA issues penalties. Leonard is fined $700,000 and is not suspended. His contract is not voided.
4. Sept. 8, 2026: Jake Fischer reports Leonard is in Miami with a Raptors player minicamp, limited because the trade is not official.
5. Sept. 11, 2026: Stein says there is no holdup at the league, and the clubs may co-submit whenever both want the call.

Toronto had a clean reason to wait. The league had warned that a trade would not shield them from whatever hit Leonard. Once the fine landed and the player stayed eligible, that reason died. Raptors people have kept saying they want the original deal. Ingram and Dick have been working out in Los Angeles for months. The remaining signature is in California.

Who Can Sign After the Suspensions?

The NBA’s own ruling, posted as an official release on Sept. 2, took the three people who would normally close a trade off the board. The Clippers owe five first-round picks and a $30 million fine. Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year. Zucker, the president of business operations, is suspended without pay for one year. Frank, the president of basketball operations, is suspended without pay for six months. The club sits in a five-year compliance program. Dennis Robertson, Leonard’s uncle and former business manager, is banned from NBA business for five years.

WHAT THE LEAGUE TOOK OFF THE TABLE

• The picks: One Clippers first-round choice in each draft from 2029 through 2033.
• The money: A $30 million team fine, plus $700,000 from Leonard to the league.
• The chairs: No governor, no business president, and no basketball president with authority to act.
• The paper: The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association signed an agreement calling those penalties final and binding.

Adam Silver did not leave room in the public line.

The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans. I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.

Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, Sept. 2 league release

League officials have pointed to general manager Trent Redden as the likely stand-in on basketball decisions. A GM can usually get on a trade call. A club still needs a governor the NBA will recognize, and Ballmer’s one-year ban from all team activities does not leave a second owner with 99 percent of the shares. It leaves one man with 1 percent.

Dennis Wong Owns 1 Percent and a Problem

Dennis Wong is Ballmer’s Harvard roommate, the Clippers’ vice chairman, and the listed alternate governor. He owns 1 percent of the team. Ballmer owns the rest. Besides Ballmer, he is the only person with an ownership stake. If the NBA wants a Clippers governor who is not serving a suspension, Wong is the name on the org chart.

He is also in the Aspiration record. Pablo Torre’s reporting, built on bank statements, showed Wong’s DEA 88 Investments sent Aspiration $1.99 million on Dec. 6, 2022. Nine days later, on Dec. 15, Aspiration paid Leonard $1.75 million, the quarterly figure on his endorsement, on a day the company also cut about 20 percent of its staff. Wong’s daughter had worked at Aspiration. The firm later went bankrupt. Joe Sanberg, a co-founder, pleaded guilty to fraud.

WHY WONG IS A HARD INTERIM

• The stake: He owns 1 percent and is the only remaining owner who can be put forward as governor.
• The wire: $1.99 million went to Aspiration on Dec. 6, 2022, nine days before Leonard’s $1.75 million payment.
• The league: The NBA would likely have to approve him as a temporary governor before a major trade is treated as official.
• The calendar: Board of Governors meetings in New York on Sept. 14 and 15 are the next obvious window for that approval.

That is the hidden party in a story that keeps getting written as Ballmer versus Leonard. Wong did not negotiate the June 30 return. He did not take the $700,000 fine. He is the person the suspensions leave holding a pen the league may not want him to hold. If Silver’s office will not bless Wong, the Clippers have no second owner to offer. If the office will bless him, it is endorsing as interim governor a man whose money sat in the same failed sponsor the investigation just punished.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the firm the NBA hired, described a pattern that went past Aspiration. The summary report said the Clippers started off-court deals with four team partners: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance. It said Leonard signed multi-year deals with Boingo, Daktronics, and Lockton in the summer of 2020 and had received $18 million from those three by August 2021. Aspiration’s player deal has been described as about $28 million over four years. Investigators wrote that Zucker’s account of an introductory email was “clearly false,” and that Ballmer’s matching account was “inaccurate (at best).”

So the delay is not a missing fax. It is a club whose owner, business president, and basketball president are banned, whose remaining owner is in the same sponsor file, and whose league is telling the public there is nothing left for the league to do.

They Still Play Each Other on Oct. 10

The basketball calendar does not care who has signature authority. Toronto set Media Day on Monday, Sept. 28, then camp from Sept. 29 through Oct. 2 at Université Laval in Quebec City, the same PEPS complex it used in 2019. The Clippers also take Media Day on Sept. 28 at Intuit Dome, then training camp at the University of Hawaii from Sept. 29 through Oct. 3.

Toronto opens the preseason against Miami on Oct. 3 in Quebec City. Los Angeles plays Golden State on Oct. 4 in Honolulu. On Oct. 10 they meet in Vancouver at Rogers Arena, a Canada Games date that was on the books before anyone served a suspension. Leonard cannot be a Raptor on that floor until someone in Los Angeles signs. He also cannot be a full Clipper in Hawaii if the club still means to send him out.

For Toronto, every day without a closing date is a day Scottie Barnes, RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, and Jakob Poeltl plan a season around a player who is not yet theirs. For Los Angeles, Ingram and Dick remain on another team’s list while the Clippers try to get down to 15 players. Leonard has already been in the Raptors’ orbit. Fischer had him in Miami in early September at a player-run camp, limited because the paperwork was not done. That is a strange place to stand: in a Raptors gym, on a Clippers contract, waiting on a 1 percent owner.

Ballmer Called the Findings a Witch Hunt

The Clippers did not accept the Sept. 2 ruling. They put out a statement the same day and have not walked it back.

We vehemently reject the NBA’s findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence. What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly, and they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the start of this investigation to ensure its fairness and accuracy. For the past year, we cooperated fully and in good faith and we will now fight just as hard to demonstrate our innocence. We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process.

Los Angeles Clippers, team statement, Sept. 2, 2026

David Kelley of O’Melveny & Myers, writing to Silver for Ballmer, called the probe a witch hunt and said the owner had spent nearly $50 million on it. People briefed on Ballmer’s next step have said a lawsuit and a request for a restraining order are among the options under review. The league and the players union already signed a document that calls the penalties final. Those two facts do not sit easily together, and they do not speed up a trade call.

Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation of the Clippers over the same endorsement deals. That inquiry is separate from Silver’s office. It does not freeze an NBA trade on its own. It does make it harder to pretend that naming Wong is a quiet piece of housekeeping.

Leonard did not join the fight. Through his new agent, Harrison Gaines, he put out a statement the day the penalties landed, accepted the $700,000, and pointed north.

Integrity and respect for this game are fundamental to who I am. I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction this situation has caused the fans and my family. I entered into my contract with the Clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone’s part to circumvent the salary cap. For 15 years, my priority has been giving everything to my family, the game, and those I share the court with. As I return to Toronto, I am focused on what I can control, closing this chapter, and moving forward with a clean slate.

Kawhi Leonard, statement issued through agent Harrison Gaines, Sept. 2, 2026

Some league people have read that last paragraph as the insult. Leonard took the fine, skipped an appeal, and spoke as if he already played for Toronto. Stein wrote that the delay had some observers wondering whether the Clippers were holding off, or considering something sharper, to spite him for that choice. The club’s public line is still the front-office vacuum. Both can be true at once. A fight with Silver does not require a second motive to slow-walk a signature. An empty governor’s chair does not require spite to stop a trade.

Reneging would cost Los Angeles the two unprotected Toronto firsts that now sit on an otherwise barren draft shelf, plus Ingram and Dick. Changing the terms after two months of a public agreement would confirm every charge that the franchise cannot be trusted on paper. Completing it requires a governor the league will accept. Wong is the only owner left to offer, and he is the owner who wired Aspiration $1.99 million.

Until that circle closes, Leonard is a Clipper on the list and a Raptor in the gym. Media Day is Sept. 28. The two clubs still share a floor on Oct. 10 in Vancouver. Someone has to sign before either date means what the June 30 agreement said it would mean.