The Toronto Raptors have welcomed Kawhi Leonard back with open arms despite a near year-long investigation by the NBA. After it was announced on Monday afternoon that Leonard had officially been traded back to Toronto, the Raptors released a statement sharing their excitement. “We’re thrilled to welcome Kawhi back to Toronto.
Page S2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 15 September 2026
Raptors 'thrilled' to welcome Kawhi Leonard days after NBA closes probe into scheme that traded him away
Hot Mic Moment
Get me the political desk. A league investigated itself for nearly a year, fined a franchise $30 million, clipped a player $700,000, sat one owner out a single season, and called that the closing chapter on cap circumvention — while the five draft picks it seized run through 2033. Institutions collecting a billionaire's league dues should not be the only body investigating that billionaire's business. Someone on the political side of this newsroom needs to explain why sports leagues police the very owners who fund them.
Gushis side
This reporter has covered plenty of homecomings, and Toronto threw quite a party Monday for Kawhi Leonard, a forward this reporter recalls signing with the Clippers back in 2019, long before any of this business started.
That federal probe, sprawling nearly two years by this reporter's count, wrapped with penalties that would make an accountant blush: the Clippers docked three hundred million, Leonard socked for seven million, and a two-year timeout for the front office.
Toronto's new prize arrives as the Clippers stare down a decade in the wilderness, this reporter hears, stripped of first-round picks clear through 2040.
Just this week, this reporter is told, bombshell text messages from Steve Ballmer surfaced and blew the roof off league headquarters — credit to the gals in Toronto's ticket office, who this reporter suspects will have Leonard jerseys on the racks before the ink dries.
Trudyher side
He signed with the Clippers in 2019, sure — but the deal the NBA just spent a year unwinding was struck in 2022, per the league's own investigation into salary cap circumvention.
Nothing federal about it — that's the NBA's own investigation, results announced September 2nd, wrapped in about a year like the Post reported. Check the ledger: $30 million for the Clippers, not $300 million; $700,000 for Leonard, not $7 million; Ballmer's suspension runs one season, not two, per that 36-page Wachtell Lipton report.
A decade's an overstatement and so is 2040. The league took the Clippers' first-round picks from 2029 through 2033 — five drafts, not fifteen years. Go lie down before the next paragraph.
Those texts broke September 3rd, not this week, with the follow-up on which Clippers executive sat beside Ballmer running September 8th. And whoever's stocking that jersey rack, it's their job moving Leonard's number, not their gender.
Sugar, that mic was hot the whole time, and Standards wants a word about sports lobbying for a jurisdiction transfer live in the booth. But the numbers hold — $30 million to the franchise, $700,000 to Leonard, one season for Ballmer, five picks gone through 2033, per the Wachtell Lipton report the Post detailed September 8th.
“They caught an NBA owner gaming his own roster, fined the team an amount that won't touch his bank account, and benched him one season like a kid who missed curfew — and that's supposed to be justice. The player at the center of it got a welcome party in a new city days later, like none of it ever happened. That's the whole racket: leagues investigate themselves, owners absorb a fine they'll never feel, and fans keep paying for the seats either way.”
“Look, the system worked exactly as designed — independent investigation, a 36-page report, real penalties, that's accountability in action. Sure the owner's back at league meetings next season and the kid's already got a new jersey, but that's not leniency, that's due process — wait, did I just call a one-year timeout "due process"? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
· Where the Clippers-Raptors, Kawhi Leonard trade stands amidst federal investigation from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· Who’s Clippers executive at center of Kawhi Leonard scandal? from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· The bombshell messages that doomed Clippers owner Steve Ballmer in Kawhi Leonard scandal from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· In basketball, the NBA announces the results of its investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers' signing of star player Kawhi Leonard in 2022. The league determines that the Clippers violated the leag from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.