Before Kawhi, there was Wilt: In 1965, Chamberlain re-signed with the 76ers, with a secret verbal provision from Sixers ownership that Wilt would gain a significant portion of team ownership after he retired if he stayed. The owner died, his replacement refused to honor it, and Wilt demanded a trade
It was verbal, rather than written, because it was against league rules for an active player to own a percentage of a team. Wilt tried to get around it by gaining up to 25% ownership of the Sixers after his playing career. Obviously, by the end of his life, that would have been pretty lucrative.
In 1965, the Sixers were a young, ascending team that traded for Wilt during an extremely rough season with the Warriors.
Their majority owner, Ike Richman, who happened to be a personal friend, offered Wilt 25% of the team after he retired if he were to stay with the team throughout his career. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-18-sp-11091-story.html This account was reported and then admitted later by Wilt himself, who continued to have an interest in NBA ownership later in life.
Wilt’s official contract was for \(100,000 per season, \)1 less than Bill Russell, https://www.espn.com/classic/s/russellbilladd.html, but he was in line to get paid a whole lot more.
But…later that year, Richman died of a heart attack. Irv Kosloff took over as the new owner, and later made it clear he had no intention of actually following through on Richman’s promise.
That caused Wilt to ask out of Philadelphia in 1968, one year after their dominant 1967 championship season. He was traded to L.A., forming what is often known as the first superteam in basketball history along with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.
What gets understated, though, is just how stacked Philadelphia was at that time, and how perfect of a roster it was for him to operate with. They had Hal Greer, the Sixers’ all-time leading scorer still, and arguably the best shooting guard of the 60s. They had Billy Cunningham, an ABA MVP who also had a good argument for the NBA in 1969 before a potentially all-time great career was derailed by injuries. Both were named to the NBA’s 75 greatest list.
They had Chet Walker, a 7x All-Star, and terrific depth. After Wilt left, they gained a really good bench shooting guard, lost their other center for almost the entire season, and still won 55 games.
A lot of reasons have historically been given for Wilt’s exit to Los Angeles, but above all, it was because Richman’s death prevented him from following through on becoming the original Steve Ballmer of NBA owners. The Lakers offered him $250k per year, a sum significantly more than the Sixers were paying him on the books, but much less than they had agreed to pay him off of them.
Along with the extra-curricular benefits that Kawhi had allegedly received from at least three organizations tied to the Clippers, he reportedly asked the Raptors for a share of ownership of the Maple Leafs in order to stay with the team in 2019 https://sports.yahoo.com/article/kawhi-leonard-reportedly-wanted-stake-160710204.html.