Five First-Rounders Gone: Every Time a League Took a Team's Draft Picks Away

Published on September 4th, 2026
Written By: Dave Manuel

On Wednesday the NBA took five first-round draft picks off the Los Angeles Clippers. Not one. Five, consecutively, 2029 through 2033, plus a $30 million fine, a year-long suspension for Steve Ballmer, two suspended team presidents and five years of league monitoring. ESPN called it the harshest punishment in NBA history, which sounds like the sort of thing people say in the first twenty-four hours and then quietly walk back. In this case it holds up. But it is not unprecedented, and that is what makes it interesting. Leagues have been confiscating draft picks for thirty-one years, usually in ones and twos, occasionally in job lots. So here are the eleven biggest, in order, with the bit nobody ever bothers to include: what actually happened to the team afterwards. The answer, more often than not, is going to annoy you.

Sports-King Feature

The Biggest Draft Pick Punishments in Sports History

Eleven cases, four leagues, thirty-one years. What they did, what it cost them, and whether losing all those picks made the slightest bit of difference.

By Sports-King

Picks Taken, Clippers5

Clippers Fine$30M

Years of Cases Here31

Won a Title Afterwards4

A note on how to read these. Each case runs down the left as a docket entry - the year, the league, what they were done for and exactly what it cost. Then, at the bottom of every one, the part that actually matters: a green box means the punishment barely touched them, amber means it stung for a while, red means it genuinely hurt. Count the colours as you go. There are more green boxes than anybody at a league office would like.

1995NFL

Carolina PanthersThey talked to a coach they were not allowed to talk to yet.CHARGE .... TAMPERING, DOM CAPERS
TAKEN ..... 1995 SECOND AND SIXTH ROUND
FINE ...... $150,000
FIRST TIME ANY CLUB LOST A SECOND-ROUNDER

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTThey hired him anyway, and made the NFC title game in year two

Start here, because it is the daftest one. Carolina were a brand new franchise and they wanted Dom Capers, who was Pittsburgh's defensive coordinator. They asked the Steelers for permission and the Steelers said yes. Problem was, league rules at the time said you could not do it before the season ended, permission or not. So the Panthers got docked a second and a sixth and a $150,000 fine, becoming the first team in history to lose a second-round pick. They hired Capers regardless, went 7-9 in their first season, and reached the NFC Championship game in their second. Total cost of getting caught: two picks and a rounding error. Total benefit: the best expansion start anyone had managed.

2000NBA

Minnesota TimberwolvesA secret handshake deal with Joe Smith, in writing, which is the bit that got them.CHARGE .... SALARY CAP CIRCUMVENTION
TAKEN ..... FIVE FIRST-ROUNDERS, TWO RETURNED
FINE ...... $3,500,000
ALSO ..... CONTRACT VOIDED, BIRD RIGHTS GONE
OWNER .... GLEN TAYLOR SUSPENDED
GM ....... KEVIN McHALE, LEAVE OF ABSENCE

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTFour years later they made the conference finals. Then it all fell apart

Until Wednesday this was the worst punishment any NBA team had taken, and the parallel is uncanny. Minnesota had an under-the-table agreement to pay Joe Smith properly later if he signed cheap now, and they were foolish enough to put it on paper. David Stern took five first-round picks, fined them $3.5 million, voided Smith's contract, stripped his Bird Rights, suspended the owner and sent Kevin McHale away on leave. Two picks came back eventually. The timing is the cruel part: this all landed in the middle of Kevin Garnett's prime, and Garnett is one of the dozen best players who ever lived. Minnesota made the playoffs every year from 1997 to 2004 and lost in the first round seven times running. Then in 2003-04, with the picks gone, they won a franchise-record 58 games, finally won a series, reached the Western Conference finals and Garnett was named MVP. The following season they missed the playoffs altogether for the first time in eight years. He was traded in 2007. One great year out of a decade with a top-ten player is not what that roster should have produced, and the missing picks are a large part of why.

2002NFL

Denver BroncosThey cheated the cap in the nineties. The bill arrived years later.CHARGE .... CAP CIRCUMVENTION, 1996 TO 1998
TAKEN ..... 2002 AND 2005 THIRD-ROUNDERS
NOTE ..... THE CHEATING YEARS WERE THE WINNING YEARS

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTNothing. They kept both Super Bowl rings

Here is the one that should bother you most, and almost nobody talks about it. Denver were found to have circumvented the salary cap between 1996 and 1998. Those are precisely the seasons they won back-to-back Super Bowls. The punishment, handed down years afterwards, was a third-round pick in 2002 and another in 2005. That is it. They cheated during the titles, kept the titles, and paid for it with two picks nobody remembers. If you ever wonder why leagues have moved to stripping first-rounders and suspending owners, this is why. The old penalties were not a deterrent. They were an operating expense.

2007NFL

New England PatriotsFilming signals in 2007. Deflating footballs in 2015. Two different scandals, same club.SPYGATE .. 2008 FIRST-ROUNDER, $250,000 CLUB
ALSO ..... $500,000 FROM BELICHICK PERSONALLY
THE TAPES SMASHED BY LEAGUE OFFICIALS
DEFLATEGATE 2016 FIRST AND 2017 FOURTH
FINE ...... $1,000,000, BRADY FOUR GAMES
RECORD ... ONLY CLUB TO LOSE TWO FIRST-ROUNDERS

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT16-0 after the first one. A Super Bowl after the second

The Patriots are the only franchise in NFL history to be stripped of a first-round pick twice, and both times they responded by being terrifying. Spygate started with a game on 9 September 2007 - week one - and cost them a 2008 first-rounder, Bill Belichick half a million dollars of his own money and the club another quarter of a million. League officials went to the Patriots facility and smashed the tapes on Goodell's orders, which is why nobody can say how big it really was. New England then won every remaining game of that season to finish 16-0, the only team ever to do it, and 18-1 overall, before losing the Super Bowl to a Giants team nobody saw coming. The punishment arrived in week one. They did not lose again until February. Deflategate cost them a 2016 first, a 2017 fourth, a million dollars and four games of Tom Brady. They won the Super Bowl that season, coming back from 28-3, which remains the most obnoxious response to a punishment in the history of professional sport.

2010NHL

New Jersey DevilsA seventeen-year contract for a man who was never going to play seventeen years.CHARGE .... CAP CIRCUMVENTION, KOVALCHUK DEAL
TAKEN ..... 2011 THIRD-ROUNDER
PLUS ..... A FIRST-ROUNDER WITHIN FOUR DRAFTS
FINE ...... $3,000,000
THE DEAL . VOIDED, THEN REDONE SHORTER

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTHe quit for Russia three years in and left them with the bill

Ilya Kovalchuk signed a seventeen-year deal with New Jersey that was very obviously constructed to drag his cap hit down, with the back end stuffed full of years he would never actually play. The league rejected it, an arbitrator agreed, and the Devils got hit with a third-round pick, a first-rounder to be surrendered within four drafts and a $3 million fine. Then the genuinely funny part: Kovalchuk played three seasons of the reworked deal, retired from the NHL to go home to the KHL, and left New Jersey holding a cap recapture penalty for a player who was no longer in the building. They have never really recovered the momentum.

2012NFL

New Orleans SaintsCash bonuses for hurting people.CHARGE .... BOUNTY PROGRAMME, ~30 PLAYERS
TAKEN ..... 2012 AND 2013 SECOND-ROUNDERS
FINE ...... $500,000
HEAD COACH SEAN PAYTON, A FULL SEASON
GM ....... MICKEY LOOMIS, EIGHT GAMES
COORDINATOR GREGG WILLIAMS, INDEFINITE

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT7-9 without Payton, 11-5 the moment he came back

Bountygate is the only case on this list where the underlying conduct was about deliberately injuring opponents rather than money or information, and the penalties reflected that. Two second-round picks, half a million dollars, and the head coach removed for an entire season - the first time the NFL had ever suspended a head coach for a full year. Roughly thirty players were implicated. What happened next is the clearest evidence in this whole article that coaching matters more than draft picks: New Orleans went 7-9 without Sean Payton, their first losing season in five years, then went 11-5 the moment he walked back through the door.

2017MLB

Atlanta BravesThey did not lose picks. They lost the players themselves.CHARGE .... INTERNATIONAL SIGNING VIOLATIONS
TAKEN ..... THIRTEEN PROSPECTS, RELEASED
GM ....... JOHN COPPOLELLA, BANNED FOR LIFE
ALSO ..... INTERNATIONAL SPENDING RESTRICTED

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTThey won the World Series four years later

This is the outlier and it is the harshest thing on the list, properly understood. Baseball did not dock the Braves a pick. It took thirteen prospects the club had already signed and released them all into free agency, so other teams could simply help themselves. General manager John Coppolella was banned from the sport for life. If a league did that in football or basketball it would be front page news for a month. And the punchline is the same as everywhere else on this list: Atlanta won the National League East the very next season and the World Series in 2021.

2020MLB

Houston AstrosA camera, a monitor and a bloke hitting a bin.CHARGE .... ELECTRONIC SIGN STEALING
TAKEN ..... FIRST AND SECOND ROUND, 2020 AND 2021
FINE ...... $5,000,000, THE MAXIMUM ALLOWED
GM ....... JEFF LUHNOW, ONE YEAR THEN FIRED
MANAGER .. AJ HINCH, ONE YEAR THEN FIRED
THE TITLE NEVER TAKEN AWAY

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTBack in the World Series in 2021. Won it in 2022

Four picks, the maximum fine the commissioner is allowed to levy, and both the general manager and the manager suspended for a year and then sacked within hours by the owner. It is the most famous cheating scandal of the modern era and the one everybody has an opinion about. Two things stand out. The first is that the 2017 World Series title was never vacated, and never will be. The second is the pattern by now familiar: Houston reached the World Series again in 2021 and won it in 2022. Whatever those four picks were worth, it was not enough to stop them.

2020NHL

Arizona CoyotesTesting players at the combine when they were specifically told not to.CHARGE .... COMBINE PHYSICAL TESTING VIOLATIONS
TAKEN ..... 2020 SECOND AND 2021 FIRST
NOTE ..... A SMALL-MARKET CLUB LOSING A FIRST

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTThe franchise was gone from Arizona inside four years

The smallest offence on this list and, in the end, attached to the worst outcome. Arizona ran physical testing on draft-eligible players at the combine after being told not to, and lost a second-rounder and a first-rounder for it. On its own that is a slap. But context is everything: this was a club with no money, no arena certainty and no margin for error, and taking a first-round pick off it was proportionally far more damaging than taking one off a giant. By 2024 the franchise had relocated to Utah. The penalty did not cause that. It certainly did not help.

2022NFL

Miami DolphinsChasing Tom Brady while he was still someone else's quarterback. For three years.CHARGE .... TAMPERING, BRADY AND SEAN PAYTON
BEGAN .... AUGUST 2019
TAKEN ..... 2023 FIRST AND 2024 THIRD
OWNER .... STEPHEN ROSS SUSPENDED, $1,500,000
ALSO ..... BRUCE BEAL, THE FULL SEASON
GOODELL .. "UNPRECEDENTED SCOPE AND SEVERITY"

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTPlayoffs twice, and out in the wild card round both times

Only the third time the NFL had ever taken a first-round pick, and the first time it did so for tampering rather than cheating on the field. The investigation found Miami had been talking to Tom Brady since August 2019 - while he was still under contract in New England - and later spoke to Sean Payton without asking New Orleans for permission. Roger Goodell described it as unprecedented in scope and severity. Owner Stephen Ross was suspended and fined $1.5 million, and the vice chairman lost a whole season. Miami then made the playoffs twice and lost in the wild card round both times, which is arguably its own kind of punishment.

2026NBA

Los Angeles ClippersFour companies, one no-show endorsement deal, and $50 million of the owner's own money.CHARGE .... SALARY CAP CIRCUMVENTION
TAKEN ..... FIRST-ROUNDERS 2029 TO 2033
FINE ...... $30,000,000
OWNER .... STEVE BALLMER, ONE YEAR
EXECS .... ZUCKER ONE YEAR, FRANK SIX MONTHS
PLAYER ... KAWHI LEONARD, $700,000, NO BAN
PLUS ..... FIVE YEARS OF LEAGUE MONITORING

WHAT HAPPENED NEXTAsk again in 2033. That is rather the point

And so to Wednesday. The NBA found that the Clippers actively arranged off-court income for Kawhi Leonard through four companies - Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton - failed to report any of it, and covered personal expenses for him on top. The centrepiece is Aspiration, who signed Leonard to a deal a former employee said required him to do nothing at all, and which arrived roughly a month after Steve Ballmer personally put $50 million into the company and the Clippers announced a $300 million partnership with it. Aspiration then went bankrupt owing Leonard $7 million, and its co-founder pleaded guilty to defrauding investors of $248 million. Five first-round picks, 2029 through 2033. ESPN called it the harshest punishment in league history and they are not wrong. The Clippers, for the record, are furious and say the league had already decided the answer before it started.

All Eleven, Side by Side

Every case, what got taken, and how it went afterwards.

Year	Club	League	Picks lost	Fine	Aftermath
1995	Carolina Panthers	NFL	2nd, 6th	$150,000	NFC title game in year two
2000	Minnesota Timberwolves	NBA	5 x 1st, two returned	$3.5M	One conference finals, then nothing
2002	Denver Broncos	NFL	2 x 3rd	Undisclosed	Kept both Super Bowl rings
2007	New England Patriots	NFL	1st (Spygate)	$750,000 total	Went 16-0, then 18-1
2015	New England Patriots	NFL	1st, 4th (Deflategate)	$1M	Won the Super Bowl
2010	New Jersey Devils	NHL	1st, 3rd	$3M	Player retired to Russia
2012	New Orleans Saints	NFL	2 x 2nd	$500,000	7-9, then 11-5
2017	Atlanta Braves	MLB	13 prospects released	GM banned for life	Beat the Astros in the 2021 World Series
2020	Houston Astros	MLB	1st and 2nd, twice	$5M	World Series in 2022
2020	Arizona Coyotes	NHL	1st, 2nd	Undisclosed	Relocated by 2024
2022	Miami Dolphins	NFL	1st, 3rd	$1.5M owner	Two wild card exits
2026	Los Angeles Clippers	NBA	5 x 1st	$30M	To be determined

The Patriots appear twice because they are the only franchise to have a first-round pick confiscated on two separate occasions.

The Bit Nobody Mentions

What happened after the punishment

Draw whatever conclusion you like from that. Ours is that taking picks off a well-run club with money is an inconvenience, and taking them off a badly-run club without money is a catastrophe - which is close to the opposite of what a deterrent is meant to do.

Bits and Pieces

Nobody Ever Takes the TrophyLook at what is missing from every single case here. Denver kept two Super Bowls won during the years they were cheating the cap. Houston kept a World Series won with a camera pointed at the catcher. New England kept everything. Leagues will confiscate picks, money, coaches and owners, but they will not touch a result, because unpicking a season means unpicking every bet, every bonus and every record attached to it. The trophy is the one thing that is genuinely safe.

The Punishment Nobody PredictedHere is a number worth holding onto. The NBA's own collective bargaining agreement sets out what cap circumvention is supposed to cost: a $4.5 million fine for a first offence and the loss of one first-round pick. The Clippers got a $30 million fine and lost five. That is roughly seven times the fine and five times the picks that the rulebook contemplates. Whatever else you think about it, the league did not reach for the standard penalty. It built a new one.

Small Clubs Feel It Ten Times HarderThe most uncomfortable pattern in this file is that the same punishment lands completely differently depending on who receives it. New England lost first-rounders twice and answered with a perfect regular season and a Super Bowl. Arizona lost one first-rounder and were in another state within four years. A rich, well-run club replaces a lost pick by signing someone or trading for them. A poor one simply has a hole where a player should be, for years.

The Braves Got the Worst of ItIf you rank these by actual damage rather than headlines, Atlanta come out top and it is not close. Everyone else lost the right to choose a player. The Braves lost thirteen players they had already chosen, signed and started developing, released straight into free agency for rivals to pick over. And the general manager was banned from baseball for the rest of his life. Then they won the World Series in 2021, because of course they did.

And Look Who They BeatHere is the detail that finishes the argument for us. The 2021 World Series was Atlanta against Houston - the two clubs on this list who were punished by Major League Baseball, meeting for the title four years and one year after their respective penalties. The Braves won it in six games, having gone into the postseason with the fewest regular-season wins of any playoff team. Two heavily sanctioned franchises, the last two standing. If the punishments were meant to hold anybody back, somebody should probably check the tape.

Sports-King's Note

The boring but necessary bitThe Clippers penalties are as announced by the NBA on 2 September 2026: forfeiture of first-round picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033, a $30 million fine, a one-year suspension for Steve Ballmer, a one-year unpaid suspension for team president Gillian Zucker, a six-month unpaid suspension for Lawrence Frank, a $700,000 fine for Kawhi Leonard and five years of league monitoring. The NBA and the players' association have stated the penalties are final and binding. The Clippers dispute the findings and have publicly accused the league of reaching a predetermined conclusion; nothing in this article should be read as a finding of fact by us beyond what the league itself published. Joseph Sanberg's guilty plea relates to fraud against Aspiration's investors and lenders and is a separate matter from the NBA's findings. Historic penalties are as reported at the time: the Timberwolves case dates to 2000 with two picks later restored; Denver's forfeitures related to conduct between 1996 and 1998; the Patriots were penalised in 2007 and again in 2015; the Devils in 2010; the Saints in 2012; the Braves in 2017; the Astros and Coyotes in 2020; and the Dolphins in 2022. Aftermath details are matters of record: New England finished the 2007 regular season 16-0 and 18-1 overall after Spygate discipline was issued in week one, and won the Super Bowl following the season Tom Brady served his Deflategate suspension; Minnesota won a franchise-record 58 games and reached the 2004 Western Conference finals with Kevin Garnett as MVP, then missed the playoffs the following season; Atlanta beat Houston in six games in the 2021 World Series; Houston won the 2022 World Series; and the Coyotes relocated to Utah in 2024. The severity verdicts attached to each case are our own judgement calls, not a formula, and reasonable people will sort them differently. Championships and records won during periods later found to involve rule-breaking have not been vacated in any of these cases.

So Does Any of It Work?

Mostly, no. That is the honest read of thirty-one years of this. Six of the eleven clubs here barely broke stride, four of those went on to win championships, and the two that genuinely suffered were the two that could least afford to. A first-round pick is a lottery ticket with a four-year discount attached, and if you have money and competent people you can replace it. If you have neither, you cannot. Which leaves the Clippers in a strange spot. They have the richest owner in American sport, a functioning front office and five years to prepare for the hole. On the evidence assembled above, that is exactly the profile of a club that shrugs this off. Then again, nobody has ever had five consecutive first-rounders taken and come out the other side, because it has only been tried once before - and Minnesota got two of them back.

The short version, for the road: the NBA stripped the Clippers of first-round picks in 2029 through 2033 on 2 September 2026, fined them $30 million, suspended Steve Ballmer for a year and placed the club under five years of monitoring, over off-court income arranged for Kawhi Leonard through four companies. The only comparable case is Minnesota in 2000, who lost five first-rounders over a secret contract with Joe Smith, had two returned, and were fined $3.5 million. The Astros lost four picks and $5 million for sign-stealing and won a World Series two years later. The Patriots are the only NFL club to lose first-round picks twice, going 16-0 after the first and winning a Super Bowl after the second. The Braves had thirteen signed prospects released and their general manager banned for life, then won the World Series four years afterwards. The Saints lost two second-rounders and their head coach for a season over Bountygate. The Dolphins lost a first and a third for pursuing Tom Brady while he was under contract elsewhere. And the Coyotes lost a first and a second, then left the state entirely.