{"id":833949,"date":"2026-09-12T19:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T19:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/833949\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T19:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T19:09:13","slug":"atlantic-notes-raptors-kawhi-m-brown-philon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/833949\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlantic Notes: Raptors, Kawhi, M. Brown, Philon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Within his Raptors season primer, Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca<\/a> continues to hear from people familiar with the matter that the trade sending Kawhi Leonard<\/a> to Toronto \u2014 and Brandon Ingram<\/a>, Gradey Dick<\/a>, two first-round picks, two second-rounders and one first-round swap to Los Angeles \u2014 \u201cwill go through sooner rather than later.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Grange writes, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is \u201cundoubtedly\u201d fuming at the major penalties<\/a> the NBA imposed on him and the team for circumventing the salary cap to pay Leonard through four different \u201cno-show\u201d endorsement deals. The fact that Leonard got off so lightly \u2014 he has to pay the league $700K \u2014 makes it sting all the more.<\/p>\n

However, the Clippers badly need draft capital after forfeiting five first-round picks as part of the punishment, and they\u2019ll be receiving a handful as part of the trade. Clippers GM Trent Redden, who\u2019s expected to be the team\u2019s interim head of basketball operations with president Lawrence Frank suspended for six months, was also the executive who negotiated the Leonard deal, Grange adds.<\/p>\n

When exactly the trade goes through is evidently still up in the air. The hold-up is believed to be on the Clippers\u2019 side of things as they work through what to do in the wake of the penalties. Marc Stein of The Stein Line reports (via Twitter<\/a>) that the NBA is prepared to take the trade call whenever the two clubs agree to do it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more from around the Atlantic:<\/p>\n

In a subscriber-only story for The New York Post<\/a>, Brian Lewis takes a closer look at how and why the Nets ended up taking Mikel Brown Jr.<\/a> with the sixth overall pick in June\u2019s draft. The former Louisville standout, whose mentors include Rajon Rondo<\/a> and Donovan Mitchell<\/a>, is eager to learn from from his veteran teammates, Lewis writes, and those close to the 20-year-old guard refer to him as a \u201csponge who soaks up information.\u201d Brooklyn\u2019s front office believes Brown can quickly become a leader for the team. \u201cFor us, to be honest, it\u2019s really important to see what makes these guys tick, where they come from, why they have the habits they [do],\u201d general manager Sean Marks said. \u201cTheir parents have a lot to do with it. And it was an absolute pleasure to meet the parents of Mikel, get to see his family background and where he\u2019s from and the history of how he\u2019s grown up, and see how he cares for his siblings and so forth. How he cared for his teammates, those things stood out, right? When you\u2019re talking to the staff at Louisville and, honestly, everywhere he\u2019s been, how he wanted to take care of his teammates and those stories that he likes breaking bread with teammates and taking \u2019em out and spending time socializing with them, that goes a long way when we\u2019re trying to build a team culture, trying to build a connected group. \u2026 It\u2019s important to bring guys in there that actually want to facilitate that.\u201d
\nWill Labaron Philon Jr.<\/a> be able to crack the Sixers\u2019 rotation as a rookie? Adam Aaronson of PhillyVoice<\/a> explores that subject, writing that the former Alabama guard appeared to be a good bet to receive minutes when he was selected 22nd overall, but that no longer seems likely after a busy offseason for the 76ers. Being a consistent shooter off the ball and providing resistance on defense, which was an issue this past season for the Crimson Tide, will be the keys to whether Philon is able to earn NBA playing time in 2026\/27, Aaronson concludes.
\nIn case you missed, the Celtics are reportedly interested<\/a> in signing guard Devin Carter<\/a> after he clears waivers. The former lottery pick was cut<\/a> by Atlanta on Friday amid a roster crunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Within his Raptors season primer, Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca continues to hear from people familiar with the matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,4441,864,6351,529,2879,39997,6,4502,681,3596,680,476,3820,25404],"class_list":["post-833949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-raptors","tag-basketball","tag-brandon-ingram","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-gradey-dick","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-labaron-philon","tag-mikel-brown","tag-nba","tag-rajon-rondo","tag-raptors","tag-sean-marks","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-raptors","tag-torontoraptors","tag-trent-redden"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117259649897783470","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}