EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsFrom a team-building perspective, the most ruinous element of the NBA's punishment of the LA Clippers for salary cap circumvention surrounding Kawhi Leonard is the loss of five first-round draft picks, one each in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033.There is only one precedent for such a serious punishment in NBA history: when the league similarly revoked five first-round picks from the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 for salary cap circumvention. In that case, the Timberwolves had come to an illegal agreement with free agent big man Joe Smith. (Then-commissioner David Stern ultimately returned two of the first-round picks.)Looking back at how Minnesota navigated -- and suffered from -- that forfeiture can help inform our understanding of how the Clippers might fare in the years to come, as they bear the brunt of the NBA's discipline.Minnesota's precedentFor the Timberwolves, the turn of the millennium was a terrible time to suffer such a drastic punishment. They'd been the NBA's worst team for years after joining as an expansion franchise in 1989; for the first seven years of their existence, they never won more than 29 games in a season.But in 1995, they drafted high schooler Kevin Garnett with the No. 5 pick, and their trajectory finally started to improve. The Timberwolves won 21 games in 1994-95, the season before Garnett was drafted, but steadily rose to 50 wins by 1999-00.Then the hammer came down, and the Timberwolves lost their first-round picks from 2001 through 2005.Their win totals soon stalled out. After winning 50 games in 1999-2000, the Timberwolves won 47, 50 and 51 games over the next three seasons -- strong records still, but no longer showing evidence of further progression.Minnesota finally took a leap in the 2003-04 campaign, after offseason trades for Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. The Timberwolves won 58 games and landed the West's No. 1 seed, and Garnett won MVP. Minnesota went on to reach the conference finals -- winning the franchise's first two playoff series in the process -- before falling to the Lakers in six games.But that one superlative season proved to be the Timberwolves' high point as a franchise (at least until the 2020s). Minnesota dropped to 44 wins and missed the playoffs in 2004-05, then peeled off 12 consecutive losing seasons through 2017. Garnett was traded to Boston during that drought, and it took more than a decade to recover.So, how did the Smith sanctions ultimately affect Minnesota? On the one hand, the team still reached the playoffs in each of the next four seasons after they were levied, culminating in a conference finals run.But on the other hand, it's hard not to wonder how much more competitive the Timberwolves could have been atop the Western Conference, and how much longer their run could have lasted, had they been able to make first-round picks during those lost draft years. Losing all of those picks conceivably cost the Timberwolves a title.Garnett was a 24-year-old just entering his prime in 2000, but Minnesota didn't have the resources to add more young talent around him. In 2003-04, it was the third-oldest team in the NBA, according to Basketball Reference. And from 2001 through 2005, only three Timberwolves age 25 or younger averaged double-digit points in a season: Garnett himself, Wally Szczerbiak (the No. 6 pick in 1999, before the Smith case) and Chauncey Billups, a free agent signing who'd leave for Detroit the following summer.The Timberwolves ended up selecting seven players in the draft from 2001 through 2005: five second-rounders and two first-rounders. Only one of those seven players provided even modest production in Minnesota, and that was too little, too late for the Garnett era.Why the Clippers' future could be better -- or much worseThe comparison between the Timberwolves in 2000 and the Clippers in 2026 isn't perfect, for reasons that could provide both optimism and deep pessimism for Clippers fans.On the positive side, seeing how the Timberwolves continued reaching the playoffs, and even reached their first conference finals, despite the lack of draft picks should be encouraging. And while the Timberwolves were devoid of first-round picks for half a decade after their punishment -- until the NBA returned two of them -- the Clippers' cupboard isn't bare, especially if their trade of Leonard back to Toronto goes through, now that the NBA has completed its investigation.They still have a first-round pick next summer. (The Thunder can swap first-round picks with the Clippers in 2027, but the Clippers can then swap with the Raptors, per the reported terms of the Leonard trade.) And even as the NBA takes away one pick from five consecutive drafts starting in 2029, the Clippers should still have picks in 2029, 2031 and 2033, due to holding extras from the Leonard and Ivica Zubac trades.The Clippers also managed to add a prized prospect to their team just under the wire, when they selected Keaton Wagler with the No. 5 pick in June. And their future cap sheet looks squeaky clean, giving them the theoretical ability to make upgrades in free agency -- if any star player is willing to join a franchise that was so recently embroiled in scandal.But there are also numerous disadvantages for the Clippers, even relative to what Minnesota experienced after the Smith punishment. Most notably, the Timberwolves were a 50-win team that revolved around a young future MVP at the time, and his brilliance is the main reason that Minnesota remained competitive in its years without picks.Conversely, the Clippers are coming off a season in which they missed the playoffs, and they're in the process of trading their best player. While Darius Garland and Wagler are both full of potential, neither guard is likely to approach Garnett's individual heights.Moreover, the Garnett-era Timberwolves' best season came after they landed Cassell -- who made the All-NBA second team in Minnesota -- and Sprewell in trades. But they didn't need to trade a single draft pick to acquire those veteran contributors.That was a different time; now, almost every win-now trade involves draft picks headed the other way. Yet the Clippers can't make those deals for the foreseeable future. Even if they have a few picks from other teams, the Stepien rule forbids them from trading those selections.In other words, the Clippers have no trade flexibility for the foreseeable future, even if they see potential avenues to improve their roster.And while the Timberwolves' loss of draft picks started immediately -- the NBA's ruling came in 2000 and began with the 2001 draft -- the Clippers' won't kick in for another three years, which means it will extend even farther into the future. If there's light at the end of the tunnel, it's a long ways away.It's possible that the NBA could mellow its harsh discipline over time and return some of the Clippers' picks. There is some precedent here, not only from the Timberwolves receiving this grace in the early 2000s, but also from the 1980s, when the NBA gave the Cleveland Cavaliers "bonus" draft selections in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986 after owner Ted Stepien had traded all of Cleveland's picks away.But that's a dim silver lining, because at the moment, the Clippers' situation looks even more dire than the Timberwolves' did a quarter-century ago. Hopefully their fans enjoyed their team's trip to the conference finals in 2021 -- which Leonard infamously missed due to a knee injury -- because it could be a long, long time before the franchise is competitive enough to return.
