LA Clippers Left Waiting on the Kawhi Leonard Trade and Bennedict Mathurin

The LA Clippers spent the last week of July doing the one thing this front office has never had much patience for: waiting. The two biggest pieces of business on the books, the Kawhi Leonard trade agreed with Toronto on June 30 and the restricted free agency of Bennedict Mathurin, are both unresolved with training camp two months away, and neither is fully in the team's hands. One is parked behind a league investigation that has run more than ten months. The other is parked behind a market that only started moving in the last few days. Everything else the Clippers have done this summer sits on top of those two unfinished items.

LA Clippers news: the Kawhi Leonard trade is still on a shelf

The framework was reported on June 30. Leonard goes to the Raptors; the Clippers get Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 first-round swap, and second-round picks in 2030 and 2033. Leonard was reported to be planning a two-year extension in Toronto running through 2028-29.

Then, on July 9, Toronto put the whole thing on ice. The league informed the Raptors that they would assume any risk stemming from the NBA's investigation into the Clippers, and Toronto declined to take that on. "In light of this, we will wait until the league's investigation is complete," the team said, while adding that it remains eager to bring Leonard back.

The investigation opened in September 2025 and centers on whether a $28 million endorsement deal between Leonard and Aspiration, a green banking company, was a way of routing money to him outside the salary cap. Aspiration later filed for bankruptcy, and co-founder Joe Sanberg has been convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Steve Ballmer invested $60 million in the company and has said he had no knowledge of Leonard's arrangement; the organization's position is that it was the victim of a fraud and has not done what it is accused of doing. Commissioner Adam Silver has been clear that the league did not stop the trade, and that Toronto chose to pause it.

Where it stands this week is murkier than either side would like. The Athletic's Mike Vorkunov said on July 24 that the investigative work is essentially finished and the league is now sorting through what it has. That is not the same as a ruling. Under the collective bargaining agreement, a cap-circumvention case goes before an arbitrator, and either side can appeal. The commissioner has the power to void contracts in these cases, which is what happened to Joe Smith and Minnesota in 2000, and Leonard is owed a reported $50.3 million for 2026-27. Vorkunov's read is that the trade still gets done, with terms potentially reworked if there is a suspension, and that outright voiding is unlikely. Leonard averaged 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 65 games last season, the best scoring year of his career.

What the Los Angeles Clippers roster looks like now

The rebuild-on-the-fly started at February's deadline, not in July. The Clippers sent James Harden to Cleveland for Darius Garland and a second-rounder, then shipped Ivica Zubac and Kobe Brown to Indiana for Mathurin, Isaiah Jackson, a 2029 first and the 2026 first that became the No. 5 pick. That is how a 42-40 team that missed the playoffs turned over its entire spine in five months.

July filled in the edges. Rui Hachimura crossed town from the Lakers on a two-year, $28 million deal completed July 6, which is the rare intra-Los Angeles transfer that actually addresses a need. Hachimura averaged 11.5 points on 51.4 percent shooting and 44.3 percent from three last season, and team president Lawrence Frank pitched him as an efficient mid-range scorer who can exploit mismatches with his size. Jordan Miller re-signed on July 3 for three years and $15.3 million, with only the first season fully guaranteed, after averaging 10.0 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 22.1 minutes across 60 games on .531/.345/.777 splits. Miller went from a two-way deal in February 2026 to being, improbably, the longest-tenured player on the roster. Kobe Sanders re-signed for four years and $11.2 million. Brook Lopez had his $9.2 million team option picked up.

The subtractions were just as heavy. Bogdan Bogdanovic declined a $16 million option and signed in Houston, Nicolas Batum's $5.7 million option was turned down, Bradley Beal declined a $5.6 million player option, and John Collins left for Detroit on a three-year, $51 million deal. The projected starting group, assuming Leonard's trade clears, runs Garland, rookie Keaton Wagler, Ingram, Derrick Jones Jr. or Hachimura, and Lopez. That group should score. Defensively it asks an enormous amount of Lopez.

Bennedict Mathurin is the last domino

Mathurin received an $8.77 million qualifying offer in June and has been the quietest restricted free agent of consequence on the board. That changed in the past week. Reports on July 22 indicated he was drawing sign-and-trade interest, and on July 28 Jake Fischer reported the Pelicans and Mathurin's camp have had recent dialogue, with a second unidentified team also involved.

New Orleans sits less than $10 million below the first apron, so a sign-and-trade is the cleanest path; alternatively, shedding a contract like Jordan Hawkins' $7.02 million expiring deal would let them use the full non-taxpayer mid-level exception, which starts at $15.04 million. The Clippers have signaled they want Mathurin back at the right number. He averaged a career-high 17.6 points and 5.4 rebounds across 54 games between Indiana and Los Angeles, and 17.4 and 5.5 in 26 games after the trade, though his three-point accuracy dropped noticeably in LA.

Keaton Wagler headlines a 3-2 Summer League

Wagler, the No. 5 pick out of Illinois and the return on Indiana's first-rounder, started slowly in Las Vegas and finished loud. He put up 23 points and three assists in a 104-82 win over Utah on July 13, a game the Clippers broke open with a 42-12 run to close the third quarter, then went for 26 points, four rebounds and two assists in a 128-120 overtime win over Minnesota on July 18. That 128 was a Summer League scoring record. The Clippers went 3-2 overall.

• Kobe Sanders looked the most NBA-ready of the group: 16.2 points, 4.8 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.8 steals across four games, with shaky three-point shooting.
• Sean Pedulla, on a two-way, had 24 points, 11 assists and six steals in the Minnesota win and closed with back-to-back double-doubles.
• Baba Miller, the No. 36 pick, signed a four-year, $9.6 million deal on July 10 with two guaranteed seasons, reported as the largest total for any second-rounder in this draft class, and blocked seven shots in five games.
• Nick Martinelli, acquired from Houston for cash, took the second two-way slot alongside Pedulla.
• Cam Christie was limited to two games by an ankle issue and shot 4-of-18.

Cap sheet, open spots and the injury file

The Baba Miller signing pushed the Clippers to 14 players under contract, leaving one standard roster spot and one two-way slot open, with the caveat that the math assumes the Leonard trade goes through as agreed. Center remains the obvious hole behind Lopez, and Ingram's roughly $40 million salary has been floated as the mechanism to fix it, in the same way the John Collins sign-and-trade ballooned into a six-team deal. Ingram was notably absent from the team facility in early July while Dick was there, which did nothing to quiet that speculation.

On the health front, Garland is the one to watch. He played only 45 games last season, 19 of them for the Clippers, and said after the play-in loss to Golden State on April 15 that he had been playing on "nine toes" between a sprained right toe and a left big toe that required surgery the previous offseason. His stated offseason plan was simply to get healthy.

The calendar from here is straightforward even if the roster is not. The NBA typically teases Christmas and opening-night games in the first half of August and drops the full schedule in mid-August, which means LA Clippers fans should have their 2026-27 dates within a couple of weeks. Training camps open in late September, with media day just before, and the regular season tips in October. That leaves roughly eight weeks for an arbitrator, a restricted free agent and a center search to sort themselves out, which is either plenty of time or none at all depending on how the Aspiration ruling lands.