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Reasons for the Clippers to trade Kawhi Leonard are apparent. So are reasons to keep the seven-time All-Pro forward who turned 35 on Monday.

For now, the team is engaged in discussions and entertaining offers for Leonard, who is highly regarded despite being central to a league investigation into allegations of salary-cap intervention.

Representatives for Leonard, who has one year remaining on a three-year, $152.4 million contract, have informed other teams he prefers to remain with the Clippers and would only sign an extension with the Toronto Raptors or San Antonio Spurs if the Clippers trade him, ESPN reported. Leonard helped both of those teams to NBA titles, the Raptors in 2019 and the Spurs in 2014. He was Finals MVP both years.

However, the Athletic reported that the Dallas Mavericks offered to trade power forward P.J. Washington, shooting guard Klay Thompson and draft picks for Leonard. Mavericks president Masai Ujiri held the same position with the Raptors when they won the 2019 championship.

If Leonard doesn’t agree to a contract extension with Dallas, he essentially would be a one-year rental and not worth as much in trade capital. Ujiri engineered the trade in 2018 that brought Leonard to the Raptors without the player agreeing to an extension, and the result was a championship followed by Leonard bolting to the Clippers.

Another factor in assessing Leonard’s trade value and the Clippers’ motivation to move him is the ongoing NBA investigation involving team owner Steve Ballmer, Leonard and the now-bankrupt sustainable financial technology firm Aspiration.

Triggered in October when the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast detailed a $28 million endorsement contract Leonard received from Aspiration, the NBA hired a prominent law firm to conduct the probe. Findings could be announced soon because NBA commissioner Adam Silver said June 2 that it was time to “wrap it up.”

Aspiration had a $300 million, 23-year endorsement deal with the Clippers and Ballmer personally invested $60 million into the company, whose co-founder Joseph Sanberg was convicted of two counts of wire fraud and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison. Ballmer admits introducing Leonard to Aspiration executives but has denied that he knew details of the endorsement deal that Leonard never fulfilled.

Silver has not stated that the NBA would hold up any trade involving Leonard because of the investigation. Still, the Clippers expressed at the end of the regular season that keeping the 14-year veteran was a priority.

“Our plan is to win with Kawhi,” Clippers president Lawrence Frank said.

Leonard is coming off his best season of six with the Clippers, averaging a career-high 27.9 points over 65 games. He has averaged 20.7 points a game during his career.

The Raptors are rumored to be dangling former Lakers forward Brandon Ingram and first-round draft picks

WASHINGTON — President Trump planned to mark his 80th birthday on Sunday with a celebration that once would have seemed unfathomable: a cage-fighting show on the storied South Lawn of the White House.

In the week ahead, some hard realities of the office have threatened to overshadow the ostentatious UFC mixed martial arts extravaganza, where combatants sealed inside a wire-mesh octagon try to punch, kick, chop and pummel each other into submission.

Trump has found himself boxed into an unpopular and costly war he helped start in Iran. An agreement to end the conflict could be close, but the crucial details are still to be negotiated. Meanwhile, about a mile from Trump’s birthday bash, crews pried the president’s name off the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts facade after a judge ruled that renaming it to include Trump was not allowed.

Regardless, the president will walk out of the White House and be surrounded by Cabinet leaders, top administration officials, Republican lawmakers and 4,000-plus spectators screaming themselves hoarse in a temporary arena under “The Claw,” a spaceship-like metal arch fitted with lighting, sound equipment and large screens. Thousands more will be watching on big screens from the nearby Ellipse.

“This event is a one-of-one event, incredible event. I love it,” said UFC chief Dana White, a close friend of Trump, during a Friday night hype session at the Lincoln Memorial where pairs of fighters shoved and scuffled for the cameras under the stoic gaze of Honest Abe’s marble likeness.

Trump has sought to tie Sunday’s event — which features seven fights running past midnight — to larger, months-long celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But it is much more geared toward feting himself, so much so that the Group of 7 summit for leaders of industrialized nations pushed back their get-together so that the president could attend his cage-match party and then fly straight to France for the meetings.

The weather, though, could put a damper on things. Strong thunderstorms and heavy lightning disrupted Friday’s Lincoln Memorial event, and the forecast for Sunday evening also looked threatening.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the weather,” White declared Friday, before conceding that he’d prefer to hold future UFC events inside arenas only.

A very different 80th birthday celebration

When Trump’s predecessor, President Biden, turned 80 in November 2022, he celebrated with a private family brunch at the White House, a reminder of just how much and how quickly things have changed.

Asked about the contrast, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said that the fight “will be one of the most entertaining nights in American history” and said that the timing was appropriate. “Having this spectacle take place at the people’s house on Flag Day during our nations’ semiquincentennial anniversary is a fitting tribute,” Schuster said in a statement, apparently including a punctuation error in referring to “nation’s.”

When he turned 80, Biden was the oldest president in U.S. history, and was months away from launching a reelection bid that he would ultimately abandon after a disastrous debate against Trump and mutiny among Democrats concerned that voters would perceive him as too old to handle a second term.

Trump has now supplanted Biden as the oldest person to be elected U.S. president. He’s constitutionally barred from running again, yet constantly toys with the notion publicly. That’s despite polls showing rising public skepticism about Trump’s mental and physical health — recalling concerns Biden faced as he turned 80.

A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that less than half of U.S. adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.

The White House countered with a lengthy statement from Trump’s former White House physician, Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, saying that Trump’s “stamina, focus, and strength are exceptional and on display every day. Claims to the contrary are pure fiction.” Jackson added that polling concerns were “being propagated by the same biased, liberal, Trump-hating press that completely ignored the absolute cognitive and physical disaster that was President Biden.”

Trump has nonetheless undergone four publicly announced physical examinations this term alone, with White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella recently declaring him in “excellent health.”

‘Bread and circuses’ — Trump-style

The UFC event is an apt metaphor for Trump’s pugilistic political style. He has also long been a practitioner of political misdirection, purposely presenting people with something other than his presidency to focus on when things aren’t going well.

With the war in Iran grinding on despite weeks of assurances from Trump that its end is nigh, gas prices staying high, renewed concerns about inflation and plummeting job approval ratings for Trump — a White House birthday party unlike anything America has ever seen is definitely a diversion.

“This is all distraction,” said Mike Fontaine, a classics professor at Cornell University, who likened it to the gladiatorial games of Imperial Rome, when combatants brutalized each other for public entertainment meant to bolster rulers’ popularity and quell potential unrest.

“This is a classic strategy,” Fontaine said. “In ancient Rome, the phrase would be ‘bread and circuses.’”

Trump says the UFC is paying for the event, and though its full cost hasn’t been divulged, the National Park Service said in a court filing that $60-plus million and tens of thousands of hours of labor have gone into it, while seven government agencies have “allocated significant resources and manpower.”

UFC also announced Friday that it was adding as an official partner for the event World Liberty Financial to create a $250,000 athlete bonus pool for Sunday night’s winners. The cryptocurrency company is co-owned by the Trump family, founded with the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and run by the diplomat’s son Zach. The arrangement further blurs lines between the Trump family’s financial interests and the events and construction projects the president has prioritized and used government resources to pull off, which many critics and political analysts have labeled corrupt.

Still, Fontaine said that when it comes to a personal flair for pageantry, Trump’s second-term tendency to lean into “hardcore masculinity and brute fighting” is marrying the UFC’s blood sport with Trump’s distinctive sense of humor and enduring sense of showmanship.

“President Trump has a once-in-a-generation talent for this stuff,” he said.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Three wins and three defeats to finish third in their qualifying group may not look like much, but there is plenty for Republic of Ireland to be proud of in how they navigated what many said was the ‘group of death’ in League A.

The bottom seeds, who had only won promotion to League A with a last-gasp goal against Belgium in a promotion/relegation play-off last year, were tipped to go straight back down to League B when they were drawn against France, Netherlands and Poland.

Manager Carla Ward always said they wanted to aim as high as possible, and while they fell short of scaling their Everest by narrowly losing to France in their final qualifier to miss out on automatic World Cup qualification, they still have a chance to reach next year’s tournament in Brazil.

They became the first side promoted to League A not to be relegated straight back down and the first to pick up not just two but three wins in the top tier, including that sensational win over Netherlands in Cork on Friday.

Their third-place finish has secured a seeded play-off in the autumn and they will be the team many will want to avoid when the draw is made on 18 June given how they have shocked Poland twice and the Netherlands and run France ever so close.

Ward’s overriding feelings when speaking to RTE were pride tinged with pain that they couldn’t get over the line, although she was philosophical in how far they have come and how far they can go.

“I’m incredibly proud of this group and I said it to them there. We’ve got a special, special group who work unbelievably hard. It shows you everything, the [French] scenes at the end, they didn’t have it easy tonight,” she said.

“France are a top, top side and the fact we are here disappointed tells you an awful lot about where we are.

“You can take so many positives. This campaign we have grown and got better and better. Whether we had won, drawn or lost tonight we wanted to continue on the journey. We are in a really good place going into October and that has to be the focus.”