Since 2019, the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard era has been mostly injuries and mediocrity with one deep playoff run to show for it.
Now it has a lawsuit to go with it, too.
Randy Shelton, a performance coach who previously worked for the Clippers and has worked with Leonard since college, is suing the organization and team president Lawrence Frank for wrongful termination and alleges the organization used him as a means to tamper with Leonard’s free agency. He also alleges the Clippers were subjecting Leonard “to unsafe and illegal treatment, in disregard for Leonard’s health and safety and known medical restrictions.” When he raised the issue with the organization, Shelton says, he was fired in July 2023.
Shelton is seeking “significant damages at trial,” according to ESPN, and the Clippers have denied his claims.
“Mr. Shelton’s claims were investigated and found to be without merit,” the team said in a statement. “We honored Mr. Shelton’s employment contract and paid him in full. This lawsuit is a belated attempt to shake down the Clippers based on accusations that Mr. Shelton should know are false.”
Leonard is currently out indefinitely for the Clippers, who just opened the Intuit Dome. He continues to deal with right leg issues that have plagued him since the end of his tenure with the Spurs in 2018.
While Leonard is mentioned throughout the lawsuit, he is neither named as a plaintiff nor defendant. But the Clippers’ treatment of and dealings with Leonard are central to the allegations laid out by Shelton. Should the case actually make it to discovery and trial, Leonard would almost certainly be deposed and/or asked to testify.
The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday, has two main sets of allegations: The Clippers’ tampering with Leonard when he was on the Spurs and Raptors, and their supposed mishandling of his injuries as a Clipper.
Tampering
The allegations:
Shelton’s complaint says he was part of a “multi-year campaign” for the Clippers to sign Leonard, going back to his final years with the Spurs in 2018. Shelton worked as a performance coach at San Diego State—where Leonard played two seasons for the Aztecs—and continued to train him throughout his NBA career.
Shelton alleges in 2017, when Leonard was still with the Spurs, Clippers assistant GM Mark Hughes “set up numerous meetings” with Shelton, to inquire about his client’s health and interest in joining the Clippers while asking for “discretion” with their conversations.
Shelton alleges he and Hughes had 15 phone conversations and “at least seven meetings” before Leonard’s 2019 free agency, which came right after Leonard led the Raptors to the NBA title. In the lawsuit, he says Hughes “repeatedly pressed for information regarding Leonard’s needs” and discussed hiring Shelton as a performance coach if Leonard signed.
Do they matter?
Tampering—when a team tries to recruit a player in impermissible ways while they are under contract with another organization—is perhaps the toughest rule to enforce in the NBA. Players on other teams talk to one another all the time, agents have clients on multiple teams, and gossip spreads rapidly, constantly blurring lines. The Knicks were punished for tampering with Jalen Brunson while his own father was on staff as an assistant coach.
Hiring a confidant to entice a player is commonplace. The Nets—the Clippers of New York—hired multiple coaches with ties to Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving throughout their own dysfunctional tenure in Brooklyn. The Lakers drafting Bronny James to appease his father can even be looked at in this light; LeBron James was technically a free agent at the time.
The reality is teams are willing to take the fine or be docked a draft pick if it means landing the player and winning. The Sixers were docked a second-round pick in the 2023 and 2024 drafts for tampering with free agents such as P.J. Tucker. The most a team can be fined for tampering is $10 million, while the maximum fine for a player is $50,000.
The Clippers, more than many teams, surely would pay any price for landing a star like Leonard. Though the Leonard–Paul George era didn’t really work out, and the Leonard–James Harden era isn’t looking much better, the Clippers have played second fiddle to the Lakers in Los Angeles for decades. The Leonard signing instantly made them a feared title contender and nationally relevant, just as owner Steve Ballmer was trying to get his $2 billion palace in Inglewood built.
In a statement to Front Office Sports, a league spokesperson said, “We are reviewing the court filings in this matter.” The Raptors and Spurs did not immediately respond to questions about the allegations that Leonard was tampered with while on their teams.
Then-Clippers coach Doc Rivers was already fined $50,000 in 2019 for comparing Leonard to Michael Jordan. The history of tampering punishments shows that any additional price the league would make the Clippers pay here would be easily worth it.
Wrongful termination/medical malpractice
The allegations:
Shelton says after he joined the Clippers with Leonard, his role was “quickly diminished,” and the team’s hiring of assistant coach and director of player performance Todd Wright in a similar role meant he had “little agency to do anything other than work with Leonard, isolating him from the rest of the team.”
The lawsuit said the Clippers “deliberately excluded Shelton from meetings and withheld necessary medical treatment and information that impacted Leonard’s training and health.” In Shelton’s view, Leonard’s torn right ACL at the end of the 2021 playoffs required a full two-year recovery, but the team insisted he return at the beginning of the 2022–23 season after sitting out all of 2021–22, and agreed to a managed workload only after Shelton argued on Leonard’s behalf. Shelton also alleged the team ignored the NBA’s concussion protocols in a March 2023 game after Leonard got hit in the face and began showing symptoms.
Shelton filed a written complaint to the Clippers after the 2022–23 season about “his work environment and the handling of Kawhi Leonard.” Though team president Lawrence Frank—a named defendant in the lawsuit—wrote to Shelton that “[w]e take your concerns very seriously and will promptly move forward with an investigation,” the team ultimately fired Shelton last summer after it said his claims were unsubstantiated. Shelton also accused the Clippers of destroying evidence in relation to his complaint.
Shelton’s complaint came after the Clippers’ season ended in a playoff loss to the Suns, in which Leonard tore the meniscus in his right knee. In his complaint, Shelton said the “mishandling of Kawhi Leonard’s injury and return-to-play protocol has been mind-blowing” and said the lack of care “for his recovery process is unacceptable.”
“The Clippers place revenue and winning above all else, even the health and safety of their ‘franchise’ player in Leonard,” the lawsuit says. Leonard has played in 256 out of 435 possible games as a Clipper.
Do they matter?
More than the tampering allegations, Shelton’s claims about the Clippers’ medical decisions could get ugly, depending on the evidence. Ironically, Shelton’s claims that he was sidelined after he helped the team sign Leonard could ultimately hurt his case. If he didn’t have full access to Leonard’s medical records and recovery plan, it could be hard to justify his claims.
Shelton needs to prove Leonard’s ongoing health issues and the difference in opinion he had with the Clippers were motivating reasons for terminating his employment with the organization and that he was retaliated against because of those differences.
Depending on the evidence, Shelton could show in court the ways in which NBA teams go against medical advice to win and keep their players on the court despite the risks. The Clippers could seek to settle the case and avoid discovery; an inside look at their medical operation could hurt them from signing stars like Leonard in the future.
Maybe only Leonard can truly speak to how he was treated by the Clippers. But if the lawsuit continues, it will shine a light on maybe the biggest conflict of interest in sports: a player’s health against a team’s desire to win games. That mistrust of teams is what has led to players hiring their own medical staffs outside of team physicians, which Leonard did in San Antonio and ultimately led to his request for a trade. In fact, the hiring of a personal trainer like Shelton is what led to this lawsuit in the first place.
It seems unlikely Leonard would claim under oath that the team he just agreed to a three-year, $153 million contract with in January abused and mistreated him. But Leonard has had perhaps the oddest and most inscrutable injury history and management of any superstar in recent memory. This is just another strange chapter.
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