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The NBA Will Reportedly Investigate Jerry West’s Recruitment Of Kawhi Leonard

Kawhi Leonard is entering his second season in Los Angeles after choosing the Clippers in free agency a year ago, provided they paired him with another star in Paul George. The Clippers’ pursuit of Leonard had been no secret, as Lawrence Frank was a regular at Raptors games to watch Leonard and make clear L.A.’s desire to bring him back home.

However, there are recent allegations that implicate Clippers executive Jerry West of improprieties in his pursuit of Leonard, lobbied by Johnny Wilkes, who claims to be Leonard’s friend, in a lawsuit that was first reported by TMZ. West denied wrongdoing, but Wilkes claims he was promised $2.5 million by West to assist in steering the star to Los Angeles. The lawsuit also alleges West agreed to give Leonard’s uncle, Dennis Robertson, a house and a travel expense account as part of the agreement for Leonard to join the Clippers.

Marc Stein of the New York Times and Sam Amick of The Athletic both reported on Thursday that the league was now launching an investigation into the claims in Wilkes’ lawsuit, although it remains unclear how much merit there is to the claims — and most importantly, if anything can be proven.

We’ll learn in due time how real these allegations are and if they are at all something that can be proven, either in court or in an NBA investigation. Given that the parties involved aside from Wilkes all have reason to avoid such improprieties becoming public knowledge, even if such agreements did happen, barring hard evidence it figures to be very difficult to find someone among the chief individuals involved who would be willing to admit to these things having taken place.