NBA Opens Investigation Following Reports That Kawhi Leonard’s Uncle Dennis Allegedly Made Illegal Free Agency Requests To Teams

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The LA Clippers might be in a bit of trouble if they offered Kawhi Leonard some extra perks to sign with the team.

Earlier this week ESPN’s Stephen A Smith dropped a bomb when he revealed that Kawhi’s uncle Dennis had asked several teams for houses, cars, and guaranteed sponsorship deals that would violate the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement.

“This is me putting on my reporter’s hat here. People in NBA circles are talking about this right now: Allegedly, the uncle, Uncle Dennis, was asking for a lot of stuff from the other teams; houses, planes, sponsorship, guaranteed sponsorship money, just as an example. They’re throwing this stuff out there. All of those things are supposedly illegal in the collective bargaining agreement. I have no idea whether this is true or not. I’m not trying to cast any aspersions on Uncle Dennis, but people in NBA circles are talking about this as we speak. Why is that important? Because one could argue the reason why this story is out there right now about the Lakers and the Raptors feeling played wasn’t just because of what Uncle Dennis asked for, but they’re going to try to turn that around and parlay that into a question about what did the Clippers give up to get Kawhi Leonard. So in other words, you’ve got teams right now playing games with one another talking about they’re trying to point the finger at the Clippers saying, ‘let’s ask what the Clippers did to get Kawhi Leonard.’

It appears that Stephen A’s report has NBA owners talking because the league has now opened an investigation into whether teams offered deal sweeteners to circumvent the CBA.

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NBA owners seem very serious about punishing teams that tried to circumvent the CBA.

Via ESPN

Buchanan, sources say, distinguished any situation in which a team were to circumvent the salary cap to provide star players with extra benefits: The league would use all investigative tools at its disposal and use its immense power to punish any team caught doing that. He reminded the governors of this, even though there are no credible allegations of circumvention at this time, sources say.

It is worth noting that back in 2015 the NBA fined Steve Ballmer and the Clippers $250,000 for offering DeAndre Jordan a sponsorship deal with Lexus.