Ex-Clippers star takes a personal shot at Kawhi Leonard

A former LA Clippers star seems to be enjoying watching karma do its thing.

Retired ex-NBA forward Danilo Gallinari appeared this week on the “A Cresta Alta” podcast. During the episode, Gallinari touched on the Kawhi Leonard scandal and took some personal shots at Leonard.

“My NBA journey wasn’t shaped by a GM or an owner … it was shaped by a player,” said Gallinari of Leonard, according to a rough translation from Italian by TSN. “A player who decided the team wasn’t working and wanted something else. And that set off a chain of events that, as you can see, were far from normal.

“In my opinion, considering he altered the trajectory of my career and landed me in a mess by shipping me out of Los Angeles, he deserves to pay the full amount,” continued Gallinari. “He needs to pay every single cent of that money he took. He ought to give it to charity. Since he has to pay it anyway, let it go to a good cause. But first and foremost, he absolutely has to pay it … I was the one who ultimately paid the price. I was the one who suffered the consequences.”

Gallinari, now 38, played for the Clippers from 2017-19 and starred for them during the 2018-19 NBA season in particular. That year, Gallinari was one of the team’s leading scorers with 19.8 points per game and helped launch the Clippers to a surprise playoff berth and a competitive first-round series against the full-strength Kevin Durant-era Golden State Warriors.

But Gallinari ended up getting traded (alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a historic haul of future draft picks) to the Oklahoma City Thunder that summer as part of the Paul George blockbuster trade. Leonard also signed with the Clippers that very same summer after giving an ultimatum to the team that he would not join them unless they improved their roster by trading for George.

As a result, the aging veteran Gallinari ended up on a young Thunder team that did not match his timeline. Gallinari would go on to bounce around the league from there after spending just one season in OKC and never recovered his prior form before finally exiting the NBA in 2024.

Meanwhile, Gallinari was either referencing the $50 million that Leonard is still under contract for next year or the $50 million that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested in the company Aspiration to allegedly funnel secret money to Leonard in violation of NBA salary cap rules. Leonard was only fined $700,000 for his role in the entire saga, but his reputation has taken an enormous hit. There is also now a federal investigation into the matter that is being led by the U.S. attorney’s office, and Gallinari certainly seems to be relishing it all.