Investigation Still Live, and the Clippers Are Stuck Waiting

The NBA and the Clippers are clashing over where the salary-cap circumvention probe into Kawhi Leonard actually stands, and that disagreement is doing real damage to the team's offseason timeline. As of August 17, the investigation has reached what's being described as a key discussion stage — which is a long way from closed. Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick are still in roster limbo, and training camp is not far off.

Everything else the Clippers have done this summer has been built around this uncertainty. Rui Hachimura, Jamarion Sharp, Johni Broome — useful pieces, all of them acquired without knowing whether the two wings coming back from Toronto would officially be on the books. The front office has been optimizing around a hole it can't yet fill. That's a workable strategy for July. It gets harder to defend in late August.

The basketball question underneath all of this remains Harden. He averaged 24.2 points and 8.1 assists last season but played only 47 games, and in the final stretch his shot volume climbed while his efficiency fell off sharply. Without Leonard's 27.3 points per game — and without clarity on what Ingram adds — the offensive load question doesn't have a clean answer yet. The depth chart can't really be set until the trade is formally resolved.

The Clippers expect resolution soon. They've been expecting that for a while now.