The Timberwolves Are Winners In the Clippers Scandal

There is no winner in the Aspiration scandal that has enveloped Kawhi Leonard, the Los Angeles Clippers, and the NBA for the last year. Other than Pablo Torre, who broke the story, won a Pulitzer, and proved the doubters wrong with his relentless investigative journalism, nobody comes away from this scandal with their hands clean.

Kawhi threw his uncle under the bus and basically admitted guilt through a statement released immediately after the NBA levied its punishments. He has to pay back $700,000. Steve Ballmer has been suspended for a year for his role in facilitating the deals and then lying about it. Ballmer also has a $30 million fine to pay. Other Clippers executives are facing suspensions. And the Clippers are being stripped of five consecutive first-round draft picks from 2029 through 2033. It’s the largest penalty the NBA has ever given a team in the 80-year history of the league.

Everybody loses in this scenario. This will be an entire section in the Wikipedia pages — the one true measure of your legacy in 2026 — for Ballmer, Leonard, and the Los Angeles Clippers.

The penalties will hamper the Clippers for at least the next decade. They have no way to build around Keaton Wagler, Darius Garland, and Brandon Ingram until at least 2034. They went from the laughingstock of the league to a pariah. It will be hard to see any free agents willing to sign with a team that has a huge disadvantage. Keaton Wagler and other young players could be looking to move on way faster than the usual first-round pick if the Clippers are consistently in the toilet of the Western Conference without the draft infusion of young talent to the roster. It’s a mess that the Clippers and NBA will be cleaning up for years to come.

However, if there’s one other team that can claim victory from the fallout of this scandal, it’s the Minnesota Timberwolves.

For 25 years, the largest punishment in NBA history was imposed on the Timberwolves for the fallout from the Joe Smith scandal. The CliffsNotes version of the Joe Smith scandal is that when the Timberwolves signed Joe Smith in free agency in 1999 after the lockout, Glen Taylor and Kevin McHale promised Smith that if he signed three consecutive one-year deals for a few million dollars, they could acquire his bird rights and then would sign him to a four-year contract worth $86 million.

Everything was going according to plan until Joe Smith’s agents were breaking up and suing each other. In the discovery process, emails about the scheme were uncovered, and the Timberwolves were in deep trouble with the NBA. The league had just recovered from a lockout that was indirectly triggered by the Wolves giving Kevin Garnett the biggest contract in NBA history when he was only 21 years old.

The NBA dropped the guillotine on the Wolves, who were in the middle of an eight-year playoff run. It suspended Taylor and McHale, and voided Joe Smith’s contract. The NBA also docked the Wolves five consecutive first-round picks, eventually giving two back after arbitration.

It crippled the Wolves at the exact moment they needed an influx of young talent around an emergent Kevin Garnett. The forfeited draft picks began in 2001, when the Wolves selected Loren Woods in the second round. They selected Marcus Taylor in the second round in 2002, who never played a second in the NBA. The NBA gave the Wolves their 2003 first-round pick back, and Minnesota used it on Ndudi Ebi, who played 86 minutes across two seasons. They also selected Gopher legend Rick Rickert with the 55th overall pick. They got Blake Stepp with the 58th pick in the 2004 draft, the last draft impacted by the fallout from the scandal.

The Timberwolves lost in the first round of the 2001, 2002, and 2003 NBA Playoffs before making the franchise’s first run to the Western Conference Finals in 2004, the year Kevin Garnett won MVP. They dropped from 58 wins in 2004 to 44 in 2005, 33 in 2006, and 32 in 2007 before trading Garnett to the Boston Celtics. The Wolves didn’t return to the playoffs for 14 years and went through the darkest decade in franchise history.

The Clippers are looking at a devastating future and won’t have the MVP or a trip to the conference finals during the fallow draft period as consolation. It’s going to get dark quickly in Los Angeles.

But for the Wolves, the Joe Smith scandal slides down a spot in the list of worst scandals in NBA history. It will become a footnote in the Aspiration scandal. Joe Smith was a good player and a former first overall pick. Kawhi Leonard is a global superstar and two-time Finals MVP. Glen Taylor is a local publishing and textile magnate. Steve Ballmer is one of the richest men in the history of the world. Minneapolis is a quiet prairie town compared to the bright lights of Los Angeles.

We weren’t all addicted to social media in 2000 like we are now. The Joe Smith scandal came and went, while the Aspiration scandal will be a major talking point all season and will have legs at least until the last draft without a first-round pick is vacated in 2033.

There are no winners in this chapter of NBA history. But as the fallout continues and the Clippers fall into oblivion, Wolves fans can rest easy knowing they’re no longer the biggest known cheaters in the NBA.