LAS VEGAS — The Kawhi Leonard reunion in Toronto is on hold — for now.

The agreed-upon trade between the Raptors and LA Clippers is now in limbo — and potentially in jeopardy — after the NBA paused it Thursday because of its ongoing Aspiration investigation into the Clippers.

The stunning development came Thursday, when both teams announced the league had halted the deal until the law firm leading the investigation since last September — Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz — completes its work and issues its findings. Yet as an NBA spokesperson said after the teams released their statements, it remains unclear when that might be.

“We don’t have a specific timeline for the conclusion of the investigation but expect the firm to finalize its work in the coming weeks,” said the league official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the NBA’s probe is ongoing.

There was some sense in league circles that the conclusion might come on Tuesday, when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is scheduled to lead a Board of Governors meeting in Las Vegas. That forum, the thinking went, would give him the opportunity to share the findings with owners before announcing it publicly. Instead the league’s statement indicated the investigation could continue for even longer, leaving the two teams that agreed to one of the summer’s biggest trades — Leonard for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two unprotected first-round picks, two first-round pick swaps and a second-rounder — facing the prospect of a pressure-packed waiting game.

The NBA informed the Raptors before they agreed to the trade that the investigation could cause issues with any deal involving Leonard, according to sources briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league’s probe is ongoing. Yet when the terms of the deal between the Clippers and Raptors were widely reported on June 30, it forced the league — and commissioner Adam Silver — to decide how to handle this unprecedented situation.

The league ignored the public pressure that came from the trade being publicized, those sources say, and maintained its stance that trading for Leonard before the investigation was completed meant the Raptors were, as the team said in a statement Thursday, “assuming the risk of any potential outcome” of the investigation.

Yet while the league’s handling of the situation isn’t seen as a sign that significant discipline is coming for the Clippers and/or Leonard, the potential for Leonard’s contract to be voided is the primary obstacle in this deal going down. That alone speaks volumes about the continued seriousness of the matter.

Had the Raptors chosen to press ahead despite the league’s warnings and go through with the trade before the investigation was complete, they would have done so with the belief that the possible voiding of Leonard’s contract — as opposed to other possible penalties — was the only concern. It’s the Clippers and Leonard being investigated, not the Raptors. The Raptors were confident they would not have to pay any potential penalty for something with which they were not involved.

However small the risk might be that Leonard’s contract would be voided, that was reason enough for the Raptors to play it safe by cooperating with the league’s preference to close the investigation before finalizing the trade. The NBA has only voided the contract of one player, Joe Smith, and that was after the Minnesota Timberwolves signed him to three consecutive below-market deals with the promise to sign him to a longer, richer deal in the future. In that case, the league voided Smith’s contract, the Timberwolves released him and the power forward signed a one-year deal with the Detroit Pistons before returning to the Timberwolves the following offseason on a six-year deal.

The case unfolded when David Stern was NBA commissioner, and there is no reason to think it would serve as precedent if Leonard’s contract is voided.

That uncertainty alone is enough to give the Raptors pause. Why give up the agreed-upon picks and players only for Leonard’s deal to be voided, potentially making it difficult or impossible to retain him? They are better off waiting for an official ruling, and so the league’s preference to sort out the investigation before the trade is not a problem for them.

Regardless, the sense is that both teams are not looking to alter the terms of the deal. Leonard was already at the Raptors practice facility in Toronto earlier in the week, and was in attendance for Kyle Lowry’s retirement announcement on Tuesday. Ingram and Dick were in Las Vegas Thursday night watching the Clippers’ summer league team.

The league, it stands to reason, is trying to limit the possibility of team vs. team conflicts, which are not unheard of. When the Charlotte Hornets traded Terry Rozier to the Miami Heat in 2024, the NBA had already investigated Rozier in 2023 after multiple sportsbooks flagged suspicious bets on his game performance. Last October, Rozier was indicted as part of a federal investigation into illegal sports gambling and did not play for the Heat this past season. In March, the Hornets sent a 2026 second-round pick to the Heat to resolve a dispute stemming from the trade.

There is a general bewilderment around the league regarding how long this investigation has lasted, and it’s not unreasonable to think the players’ association would become involved if it continued long enough to jeopardize Leonard’s ability to plan his future — i.e., sign an extension, as his current contract is set to expire after this coming season. The league never suspended Leonard or placed him on leave during the investigation, so the possibility that the Clippers might look to trade him always existed. The Clippers made moves to get younger in separate trades before the deadline, moving both James Harden and Ivica Zubac in deals that landed them Darius Garland and what became the fifth pick in the draft, used on Keaton Wagler, respectively.

During the NBA Draft in June, Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank was asked if the Aspiration investigation factored into the team’s draft strategy, including the Wagler selection.

“I can’t comment on the specifics of the investigation, but what I can say is we did not do what we’re accused of doing. The investigation has had no impact in terms of how we go about our business. We just continue to go about our business as normal.”

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LAS VEGAS — The NBA loves player movement, and that was true long before the new collective bargaining agreement, with its punitive second apron, started encouraging more trades than ever.

When combined with the star power of the league’s best players, transactions allow the NBA to stay in the news almost year-round. August and September are usually quiet, but there have been some whoppers completed in late summer. The NBA capitalizes on that. There are always many moves, some of them seemingly out of nowhere, at this time of year.

The Kawhi Leonard trade — well, now an on-hold trade — did not come out of nowhere. It is stupefying, then, that the NBA was caught unprepared. The Luka Dončić trade in January 2025 was proof that any player could be traded at any time. Certainly, that would include Leonard, an older, injury-prone player whose contract is set to expire at the end of the 2026-27 season. The league should have been out in front of this. Instead, it appears it was reactive to trade talks, with the LA Clippers and Toronto Raptors down the road on negotiations before firmly stepping in.

To be clear, per sources briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league’s probe is ongoing, the NBA informed the Raptors several days before the deal was agreed on that they would be proceeding at their own risk. The Raptors would assume the risk for any penalties levied against Leonard (but not the Clippers) if the trade was completed and then Leonard’s contract was voided. If this trade does not go through, the Raptors should accept their share of the blame.

However, this situation should have been confronted months ago.

The league should feel responsible for two reasons. The first is not clarifying Leonard’s status the moment the NBA started the investigation into whether the Clippers circumvented the salary cap in retaining Leonard in 2021. Obviously, NBA commissioner Adam Silver was going to wait until law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz delivered its findings before deciding on what punishment the Clippers and/or Leonard could face. However, so long as there was a possibility Leonard’s contract would be voided — and why wouldn’t there be? — the NBA should have explicitly told the Clippers (and probably all 30 teams) that any team that traded for him would have to deal with the consequences Leonard received.

Undoubtedly, that would have undercut the Clippers’ leverage in any trade negotiations involving Leonard. Additionally, the National Basketball Players Association would surely have objected to limiting Leonard’s trade market, should it have an impact on where he might get another contract. However, teams are constantly assessing and reassessing their situations, especially as major transaction windows approach. At the trade deadline, the Clippers traded James Harden and Ivica Zubac for future-minded returns. You do not need to be an NBA devotee to understand the guy turning 35 whose contract is expiring might be next.

Teams should have had zero doubt about who would be on the hook if the league voided Leonard’s contract. In that sense, everyone is lucky the Clippers didn’t agree to trade Leonard on a more condensed timeline before the February deadline, when games were being played. At least now, during the offseason, there is time for teams to wait, especially with most of the league’s major business seemingly completed.

Still, if this thing goes sideways, there will have been an opportunity cost. If it was obvious Leonard’s status was in doubt, maybe the Raptors would have made more aggressive offers for the likes of LaMelo Ball, Jaylen Brown or another star who might have been pried away from his team. The Raptors obviously feel they are ready to make another move toward contending.

The Clippers might have approached things differently, too. If they had known Leonard’s trade value would nosedive because of the uncertainty surrounding the investigation, maybe they would have held on to their veteran players or sought slightly different returns for Harden and Zubac. Maybe they would have made the same moves regardless, sure, but they should have been able to understand their options with Leonard when they made those moves.

Which brings us to the second of the league’s missteps. Namely, why is this investigation not over yet?

Surely, the league shouldn’t be making rash rulings without as much information as can be gathered. However, this story started Sept. 3, when the initial “Pablo Torre Finds Out” episode about Aspiration and the Clippers, which has since won a Pulitzer Prize, was released. More than 10 months have passed.

It is not simple to track down sources, gather information and deliver a thorough report on any subject. However, this matter is not in the courts, which means there is no legal red tape the law firm should have had to confront in its efforts. Moreover, the NBA is a well-off client, and surely could have thrown a little more money at its chosen investigator to free up some more resources to speed up the process. There is no reason this investigation should not have been wrapped up for a while now.

The league should have felt not only urgency to get things right, but also to get them done quickly. It knows how competitive the league is in the age of parity and how much teams want to tinker if things don’t go according to plan. Only one team walks away from a season truly happy with the result. The Clippers didn’t win the title; in fact, they didn’t make the playoffs. Of course, they were going to explore roster changes. And Leonard was a clear impediment to the Clippers’ making a clean break with the past — or as clean a break as the results of the investigation allow them to make.

From the outside, it seems likely this trade will still happen, and Leonard will end up in Toronto. If that is the case, this will end up as a largely forgotten moment when confusion reigned and the involved parties looked silly but ultimately did not change the outcome of anything.

If the investigation yields harsher findings, and the league feels it is necessary to void Leonard’s contract, the Clippers, Raptors and Leonard will all feel aggrieved. And though the two teams did not need to agree to the trade once the league flagged the issue, nor did whoever leaked the deal’s “completion” need to go public, it is the league that could have taken that result off the table a long time ago. To whatever extent the league didn’t make this possibility clear months and months ago, it represents a staggering lack of foresight.