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After a year-long investigation by the NBA a decision has finally been reached in the Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers cap circumvention case. The Los Angeles Clippers and their ownership naturally took the brunt of the punishment with their team being stripped of five first-round picks, as well as suspensions being handed to Steve Ballmer, Lawrence Frank, and Gillian Zucker as well as a $30 million fine as well. Leonard also faced punishment in this case, albeit a much lighter punishment than the Clippers received. Leonard was ordered to pay $700,000 in restitution for improper benefits from the Clippers for his uncle and former representative Dennis Robertson. Although $700,000 is not an amount you sneeze at for regular people like you and me, it is a far cry from the level of punishment the Clippers received. It is also, by and large, a punishment that won’t impact the Toronto Raptors whatsoever. Considering a suspension was a theoretical punishment, a fine is something that the Raptors must be overjoyed to see. There were even rumblings that Leonard’s contract that he signed with the Clippers could be voided, that he could be suspended, and that his trade to the Raptors could be dissolved as a result of his potential role in this cap circumvention case. Relatively though, Leonard got off with a pretty light punishment. So it begs the question: why? In a case such as this it would have been and was extremely difficult to prove that Leonard knowingly signed this endorsement deal with the sole intention of circumventing the salary cap. NBA teams around the league have partnerships and brand deals with different businesses and it is a common practice for teams to funnel their players to these brands for endorsement deals, as we’ve seen the Toronto Raptors countless times throughout the years. Leonard has done this many times throughout his career, so it was easy for him to say that he had no knowledge of foul play and that he thought this was business as usual. For the investigators, it likely would have taken acquiring direct communication from Leonard himself that he knew the deal was not authentic, otherwise, the evidence that he knew would have been too circumstantial. This gets into the concept of circumvention: it’s conceptually something that the team does in breaking rules, not the player in receiving the benefit. Furthermore, the NBA surely knew that the NBA Player’s Association was watching this very closely. If the league started to look too closely at player deals and limit its earning capacity, it could find itself in a much broader fight than Adam Silver wanted. Meanwhile, it seems as though other NBA owners did want Steve Ballmer to see a real punishment because he is so much wealthier than the rest of them. In essence, the motivation of so many of the other parties in the NBA seems to have pointed towards the punishment being doled out unevenly between the Clippers and Leonard himself. Whether or not Leonard knew that this was a phony endorsement deal can be debated endlessly, but this resolution reveals that it was simply too difficult to prove that he did, and levy too heavy a punishment on him. With this case over, Leonard and the Raptors can breathe a sigh of relief and prepare for their quest for an NBA title this season. Perhaps the real beneficiary is, of course, the Raptors themselves. Time to hunt a championship.