Will the Kawhi Leonard acquisition go down as the ‘worst ever’ in NBA history?
Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz are joined by Yahoo Sports NBA contributing writer Tom Haberstroh to discuss if the acquisition of Kawhi Leonard will go down as one of the worst moves in NBA history. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV .
Video Transcript
Can you make the argument that giving up essentially 10 first-round picks to trade for Paul George, which was the condition that Kawhi Leonard had to come and, and sign with the Clippers.
So five for Paul George, the five picks that they'll be docked for the cap circumvention situation, this, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and all of the money that they invested, for Kawhi Leonard, for him to hit the 65 game threshold twice in seven years and get to one conference championship game.
Can you make the argument that the Kawhi Leonard acquisition is the worst in the history of the NBA?
Oh, yeah.
You can certainly lay out that case.
They didn't reach the conference finals, at least, at least in the NBA finals with Kawhi Leonard.
Paul George didn't amount to much in the, in the Clippers.
And Steve Ballmer in opening up this $2 billion, Intuit Dome, it's an embarrassment.
Not just the, the lack of winning with Kawhi Leonard, it's the scandals that came along with it and made Steve Ballmer the laughing stock of the NBA.
And that is one thing that money cannot buy.
And this is why when I wrote the column for Yahoo Sports, which you can catch it on the front page right now, I said, "Good on the league."
You know, because we're, we're, we're watching the league right now being fa- faced with multiple gambling investigations, federal indictments, Chauncey Billups, a Hall of Famer, Terry Rozier, Malik Beasley.
Ja Morant is already banned from the league for engaging in these illegal sports gambling acts.
And then you had this, and the NBA stood up and said, "Yeah, even though Steve Ballmer is worth basically more than every other owner combined, we can't stand for this.
We won't stand for this."
And I think for the NBA, this was a really good pressure test for Adam Silver, and I applaud the league office for dropping the sledgehammer on Steve Ballmer because I think the integrity of the league was at stake.
And by doing this, they're also saying, "Yeah, it wasn't bad enough to not go anywhere with Kawhi Leonard and to give up a king's ransom for Paul George and the future multiple MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, champion Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
That's not enough."
They did not learn their lesson in this case.
And the NBA said, "Not only are we gonna strip you of draft assets and money, we're also gonna ban your top executives for six months or more from even engaging on the premises at Intuit Dome or engaging in any NBA personnel activity."
