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The possibility that the NBA’s investigation into Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers could stretch into 2027 has not killed the blockbuster trade sending him back to the Toronto Raptors.

Both franchises still intend to complete the deal, according to ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, despite uncertainty over when the league will conclude its investigation into allegations that the Clippers circumvented salary-cap rules to compensate Leonard.

The nearly year-long probe centers on a four-year, $28 million endorsement agreement Leonard received from Aspiration, a now-bankrupt company that previously held a major sponsorship deal with the Clippers.

Los Angeles owner Steve Ballmer has acknowledged introducing Leonard to Aspiration but denied arranging or knowing about the endorsement agreement. The Clippers and Leonard have consistently denied wrongdoing.

The league is examining whether the endorsement was legitimate or an improper method of funneling additional money to Leonard outside his NBA contract.

Holmes reported that the investigation could extend into next year if the league, Clippers, Leonard and National Basketball Players Association cannot agree on the findings or any proposed punishment.

The union would reportedly be prepared to take the case to arbitration if it believed the NBA attempted to discipline Leonard without sufficient evidence. That process could add months to an investigation that has already complicated one of the offseason’s biggest moves.

Toronto and Los Angeles reportedly agreed to the trade on June 30. Leonard would return to the franchise he led to the 2019 championship, while the Clippers would receive a package headlined by Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick and multiple draft picks.

The transaction was placed on hold after the NBA informed Toronto that it would assume the risk of any punishment affecting Leonard once the trade became official.

Potential discipline could include fines, lost draft picks, suspensions for team personnel or even the voiding of Leonard’s contract. Exactly how any penalty would affect a completed trade remains unclear.

That uncertainty explains Toronto’s reluctance to finalize the deal before the league reaches a decision. It has not, however, changed the Raptors’ desire to reunite with Leonard.

Shortly after the trade, Raptors team president Masai Ujiri expressed confidence in Leonard’s mindset.

“He is determined and seems in the right frame of mind,” Ujiri said. “You will be hearing from him shortly. I think there is a fire inside of him and we are all excited about that.”

The 35-year-old is coming off a career-best scoring season, averaging 27.9 points across 65 appearances.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently expressed hope that the investigation would conclude before the regular season, but no formal deadline has been announced.

The Raptors and Clippers are therefore preparing to move forward while waiting for a process they cannot control.

Leonard’s return to Toronto still appears to be the expected outcome. The only question is whether it happens before training camp, before the regular season—or after the investigation becomes a problem that follows both teams into 2027.

LeBron James’ final NBA chapter could be captured from the inside.

James and ESPN are reportedly nearing an agreement on a documentary series that would follow his time with the Philadelphia 76ers while revisiting the defining moments of his career, according to The Athletic.

Negotiations are said to be at the “one-yard line,” although financial terms and a potential release date remain unknown. ESPN and a representative for James declined to comment on the report.

Should the deal be finalized, cameras would follow James throughout his first season in Philadelphia, where he will begin a record-extending 24th NBA campaign. The series would also pull from an extensive archive of footage collected since James emerged as a national phenomenon at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School.

That could provide viewers with previously unseen material from a career that has stretched across Cleveland, Miami, Los Angeles and now Philadelphia.

The obvious comparison is Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance,” the 10-part ESPN documentary centered on the Chicago Bulls’ 1997-98 championship season. Cameras received extraordinary access to Jordan and the Bulls during their final title run, although the series was not released until 2020.

A James project would only intensify the debate that has followed both superstars for years. Jordan’s documentary revisited the end of a dynasty. James’ version could capture the conclusion of the other career most commonly mentioned in basketball’s greatest-player conversation.

The biggest unanswered question is whether this is actually James’ final season.

The 41-year-old called joining Philadelphia his “last decision,” but he signed a two-year contract and reportedly holds a player option after the 2026-27 campaign. His agent, Rich Paul, has also left open the possibility that James could play beyond the next two seasons.

That uncertainty could affect when the series reaches television. A documentary chronicling James’ arrival in Philadelphia would already carry enormous interest, but its impact would be greater if the footage ultimately captured his final games.

James chose the 76ers after ending an eight-season run with the Lakers, whom he helped lead to the 2020 championship. He now joins a star-heavy Philadelphia roster featuring Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and newly acquired Jaylen Brown.

The move was made with a fifth championship in mind. If the 76ers can deliver one while cameras document the season, James could produce the Hollywood ending Jordan enjoyed with Chicago.

Unlike “The Last Dance,” however, nobody yet knows when James will take his final bow.

Good morning New York! So you broke a championship curse that spanned five decades. Fifty-three years since the last banner went up, and now there’s a new one. Welcome to the club nobody tells you the rules of until you’re already a member. You are the curse breaker, the uplifter of community, the beacon of hope. You’re also the biggest target alive.

Welcome to being the 2015 Warriors after the parade.

I say that with love, because as an Oakland kid who watched his longsuffering franchise FINALLY make good, I lived it. That team walked into the next season with the same core, the same coach, the same swagger, and it still didn’t repeat. Golden State went 73 wins deep the year after and still watched someone else hoist the trophy. Talent wasn’t the problem and neither was continuity wasn’t the problem. The problem is that winning a title doesn’t freeze the league in place around you. Rather, it wakes the whole league up. Every single franchise has to look at itself and say “whoa if that box of misfit toys can win, why can’t we?”. And right now, the whole league is very much awake.

I distinctly recall the Warriors having to battle a myriad of “lucky” allegations that drove the team into a psychopathic competitive zone. The Knicks are gonna have to find some of that juice to make the new climb.

Let’s start with what New York already knows is coming. Mitchell Robinson is gone to the rival Celtics. Miami paired Giannis Antetokounmpo with Bam Adebayo. Philadelphia is running out Jaylen Brown next to LeBron James. Both the Celtics and 76ers are in their division! And every night, the Knicks are gonna get everyone’s best punch. Every opponent will be hyped to face the champs and embarrass them.

I know the counterargument, because it’s the same one Warriors fans told themselves in 2015. Continuity is an edge. The Knicks added Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges and needed real time to figure out how those pieces fit, and now they get to run it back with that learning already paid for while half the league starts from zero. That’s real.

But then there’s the part nobody wants to say out loud, the championship hangover. It’s not a myth. Winning a championship changes what every day feels like, and the teams that repeat are the ones who fight that change instead of pretending it isn’t happening. Jalen Brunson, Mike Brown, OG Anunoby, they’ve got the reputation for grinding through adversity. But adversity from an opponent and adversity that comes with finally getting everything you wanted are two very different monsters, and only one of them shows up on tape.

Here’s what should actually worry Knicks fans more than any of that. This team has made a habit of getting knocked down before it gets back up. Down 2-9 to start the year. Down 2-1 to Atlanta. Down 22 to Cleveland in the fourth quarter. Down 29 to San Antonio at the half. Every single time, they answered, and that resilience is real and it’s earned. But resilience like that usually gets built by being an underdog, by being counted out, by having something to prove. Nobody counts out the defending champs. The Knicks are about to spend an entire season being the hunted instead of the hunter for the first time in this era, and we genuinely don’t know yet if that changes how they play when adversity hits, because they’ve never had to find out.

So no, I’m not telling you it’s impossible. Nobody’s won back to back since 2018, and someone has to be first again eventually. But history is cruel because winning it once and winning it twice require two completely different versions of hunger, and only one team in the last decade has figured out how to hold both at the same time.

Do you know who that team was? Here’s a hint: they ran LeBron out of Cleveland.

The Draft is over. The Summer League is over and it would appear that free agency, if not over, is basically done as well. Now comes the long Summer. From the end of Summer League on July 19 till the first preseason game on October 6, it will be all highlights and speculation along with Moe Wagner’s expected signing. Maybe there’ll be a surprise or two, but for the most part it’s about expectations.

—July 30 – August 4: Day’Ron Sharpe and Kenyon Martin tour China with stops in Shanghai and Huangzhou.

—August 2: 3:00 p.m. ET. WNBA trade deadline.

—August 5: Last day for teams to issue required tenders to unsigned second-round picks. Not applicable to the Nets. Tyler Bilodeau signed a two-way deal shortly after the Draft.

—August 31 – September 16: FIBA World Cup break for WNBA players, coaches.

—September 24: Last day of WNBA regular season.

—September 27: WNBA Playoffs begin.

—September 28: Brooklyn Nets Media Day at HSS Training Center.

—September 29: Nets Training Camp opens at HSS Training Center.

—October 1: Terance Mann eligible for three-year, $72.6 million extension starting in 2027-28. Again, highly unlikely.

—October 6: Brooklyn Nets open preseason vs. Charlotte Hornets in Charlotte. 7:00 p.m. ET.

—October 8: Brooklyn Nets host the Philadelphia 76ers and perhaps LeBron James at Barclays Center. 7:30 p.m. ET.

—October 12: Brooklyn Nets travel to Washington, D.C. to face the Washington Wizards at the Capital Center, 7:00 p.m. ET.

—October 14: Nets play fourth and final preseason game vs. Heat at Kaseya Center, Miami. 7:30 p.m. ET.

—October 19: Roster cut down day. Teams must get down to 15 standard deals and three two-ways.

—October 20: Opening Night, 2026-27 NBA season. Limited number of games.

—October 21: Likely opening night for Brooklyn Nets

—October 30: Emirates NBA Cup 2026 | Group Play tips off on Prime Video. Brooklyn Nets will play in East Group A alongside the Detroit Pistons, Toronto Raptors, Orlando Magic, and Milwaukee Bucks.

—October 31: Nets must extend each of the Flatbush 5 for a third season.

—November 13: Opening Night, Long Island Nets’ 2026-27 G League season.

—November 27:  Emirates NBA Cup 2026 | Group Play concludes

—December 4-5:  Emirates NBA Cup 2026 | Knockout Rounds | Quarterfinals

—December 8-9:  Emirates NBA Cup 2026 | Knockout Rounds | Semifinals

—December 11:  Emirates NBA Cup 2026 | Championship | Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, IN

It’s not even been a week since we found out LeBron James is now a Philadelphia 76er, and the impact of his arrival is already starting to go beyond what he’ll be doing on the basketball court — just as you’d expect. There’s also how he plans to tell the story of the final stage of his career, and it sounds like he has something very exciting lined up.

The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand has reported that LeBron and ESPN are closing in on an agreement for a behind-the-scenes documentary in a similar style to Michael Jordan’s 2020 ‘The Last Dance’ series, which was co-produced by ESPN and Netflix.

Marchand confirmed that the talks to finalize the deal are close, and initial plans for filming during his time with the Sixers:

One of the sources described the talks as being at the “1-yard line,” with the expectation that James, 41, will have a camera crew documenting his time with the Philadelphia 76ers, who James signed with this month. The 76ers are expected to be the final home of his legendary career.

The documentary is expected to also use footage from earlier in James’ career, as NBA crews have filmed him since he was a rookie, including some never-before-seen footage.

As of now, there’s reportedly no set date of when the documentary would be completed and aired.

Maverick Carter has weighed in on the documentary to say they “are not doing anything like” ‘The Last Dance’. So even though we may see a documentary similar in style, with cameras following LeBron in Philly, his camp at least don’t want to give the impression this is definitively his last season.

If you’ve somehow never seen it, ‘The Last Dance’ told the story of Jordan’s career with a main focus on the Bulls’ 1997-98 season as they made their run to secure a second three-peat. There were quality interviews and unseen footage galore, with excellent editing and production throughout. Hopefully we’ll be getting more of the same from this new story of LeBron’s career and his shot at a title with the Sixers.

Of course, Jordan’s documentary had the advantage of uncovering more details and stories from a time when the constant coverage of social media and smart phones didn’t exist. More happened out of the public eye. It also released during the COVID pandemic, at a time when we were all at home desperate for new entertainment, which probably added a heightened level of excitement when each new episode dropped.

If this LeBron documentary goes ahead and is anywhere near as good as ‘The Last Dance’, though, it promises to be a brilliant series.

Give LeBron James credit: He wasn’t bluffing.

During an episode of his Mind the Game podcast in late May, he said: “I think at some point in June, late June, as July rolls around, free agency starts to get going and as July rolls around and maybe into August, we’ll start to kind of get a feel of what my future may look like.”

James didn’t decide to sign a two-year, veteran-minimum contract with the Sixers until July 24. The Lakers had long moved on by then, as expected.

Shortly before free agency began, LeBron informed the Lakers that they could “move on without him because he will play elsewhere.” They proceeded to splurge on Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes and Collin Sexton within the first 24 hours of free agency.

Now that most of the free-agency dust has settled — Jonathan Kuminga notwithstanding — it’s hard not to circle back to one question: If LeBron was willing to play on a minimum contract, why didn’t he just re-sign with the Lakers? He wouldn’t have to uproot his family and he’d get to finish out his career alongside Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves and Kessler.

His decision to join with the Sixers instead is fairly telling.

The Thunder and Spurs loom large

In his announcement, James said he still wanted to “compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship.” He added that he believed he could help make the Sixers “a championship team.”

It’s fair to wonder how all five of LeBron, Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid will fit together, although it’s not hard to see the upside if everything breaks right for them. Having that many star teammates will reduce the burden on each of them during the regular season, which should help keep them fresher for the playoffs.

“A source familiar with James’ thinking” told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin that his choice “hinged on the pursuit of the fifth championship. After weighing his options, he landed on Philadelphia as the best situation for that.”

Left unsaid: He chose the Sixers over the Lakers in that regard.

While the Lakers now have one too many players signed to standard contracts after adding Ziaire Williams, Matisse Thybulle and Kevon Looney to minimum deals, one would think the Lakers gladly would have sacrificed any of them to re-sign LeBron on a min. Perhaps California’s state income tax worked against the Lakers when the salaries being offered were otherwise the same, but it doesn’t seem as though LeBron even entertained re-signing with them. Why is that?

The presence of the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs in the West had to play a factor.

After this offseason, one could make the case that the East is deeper than the West, particularly assuming that the Kawhi Leonard trade eventually goes through. However, the West has the top two title favorites by far.

Could LeBron and the new-look Lakers have been in the race for a top-four seed in the West? They’d have to beat at least two of the Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves for it, but that wouldn’t have been impossible. Potentially having to topple both the Thunder and Spurs in the playoffs, though? Just to get to the NBA Finals?

Again, it’s not like LeBron and the Sixers will have a cakewalk in the East. The reigning champion New York Knicks reside in the same division as the Sixers, as do the 2024 champion Boston Celtics (albeit sans Brown, the Finals MVP that year). The Miami Heat added Giannis Antetokounmpo this offseason. The Indiana Pacers are getting back a healthy Tyrese Haliburton. The Toronto Raptors are (theoretically) reuniting with Leonard. The Sixers’ 25-year conference finals drought isn’t guaranteed to end.

But they don’t have to worry about the Thunder or Spurs until the NBA Finals, and they wouldn’t have to beat both of them in the playoffs. That’s a huge selling point for any team in the East right now.

One other factor might have helped drive LeBron out of L.A. as well, though.

The fan factor

LeBron has played for three teams in his NBA career thus far, and he’s won at least one championship with each of them. But no matter what he did in L.A., he would never replace Kobe Bryant in the minds of Lakers fans.

The Sixers have had plenty of all-time greats over the years, including Wilt Chamberlain, Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson. But they don’t have a Kobe-esque shadow looming over them.

In the Game Over episode about James’ decision, his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, discussed that with co-host Max Kellerman.

“I think the city of Philly is gonna embrace him,” Paul said.

“They’ll be a lot more appreciative than L.A.,” Kellerman replied.

Paul shrugged and said, “I just think it’s a different fanbase.”

LeBron alluded to that as well in his announcement.

“I am so excited to energize a new fanbase and start this incredible journey one last time,” he wrote.

He can already consider that mission accomplished.

A source “familiar with James’ thinking” echoed that to McMenamin as well.

“One of the things that was compelling about the Sixers was how passionate the fanbase is and how long it’s been since they’ve won a championship,” the source said.

The Sixers’ proximity to championship contention was undoubtedly their main selling point. LeBron didn’t leave the Lakers because of Kobe stans. But that sentiment popping up a few different times is telling, particularly since McMenamin reported a few months ago that LeBron felt the Lakers took him for granted at times.

LeBron’s beef is likely more with President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka than Lakers fans. But the lack of appreciation that he felt in LA compared to how Philadelphia has already received him might only further justify his decision to leave.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.

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