The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov on Possibility Kawhi’s Raptors Trade Gets Voided

TJ wanted a timeline on Kawhi Leonard. Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic could not give him one, and he was refreshingly upfront about why.

"I wish I had better things to say other than we're all going to wait for eternity, but that's where it stands," Vorkunov said.

Here is the state of things. The investigation itself is essentially over. The NBA is now sifting through what the law firm it hired actually found and deciding whether there is a punishment it wants to levy. That is the easy part to explain. What comes next is where the calendar starts to disappear.

If the league does decide on a punishment, there could be a settlement involving the Clippers and Steve Ballmer, with the players association getting involved and Leonard himself in the mix if anything lands on him. But the collective bargaining agreement lays out a different route.

"The CBA says the process is you almost go to like a trial," Vorkunov explained. You present your case to a system arbitrator, who rules on whether the proposed punishment sticks and whether it makes sense. And then there is an appeals process written into the CBA on top of that.

Each of those steps adds time. Vorkunov called it a known unknown, which is about as precise as anyone can be right now.

He also reported last week that part of the reason the investigation stretched on is that the league was looking into whether a potential second contract existed involving the Clippers and Leonard.

The piece that has actually frozen the Raptors trade is more procedural than dramatic. According to Vorkunov, Adam Silver's office put paperwork in front of Toronto asking the Raptors to sign off on living with the risk of trading for Leonard, including whatever punishment might come and the consequences of absorbing it.

Toronto declined to sign it and hit pause instead.

"They're saying that's not them thinking that there's any punishment to come," Vorkunov said, "but that's also them saying we want to see how this all plays out before we do anything officially."

That is a reasonable position and a maddening one. Nobody is walking away, but nobody is committing either.

As for a finish line, Silver has said he is hoping for the end of summer. Vorkunov was careful to flag the distinction, and it matters.

"That's not Adam Silver saying he believes it will end by the end of the summer," he said. "That's his hope."

So where does Leonard actually play this season? Vorkunov's first answer was TBD. Pressed for a gut instinct, he leaned toward the deal surviving.

"I think the trade with the Raptors will still happen," he said.

His reasoning is a process of elimination. If the league voids the contract, the Clippers literally cannot trade him anymore and the deal is dead on the spot. Short of that, almost everything else is workable. A suspension can be accounted for by tweaking the terms of the trade. And if the investigation concludes there was no wrongdoing at all, everyone is on a glide path to getting it done.

The segment opened with TJ telling Vorkunov his name sounded like it belonged to a 1980s tag team partner for Nikolai Volkoff. Vorkunov took the compliment and then took the gimmick a step further.

"I'd have to play the bad guy with the Russian name," he said. "There's no other output, obviously."