Reopened inquest into Steve Biko’s death resumes in EC court

Reopened inquest into Steve Biko’s death resumes in EC court. During his testimony virtually last week, Siebert, denied any intention to assault and kill Biko.

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Orlando Magic3dNBA insidersNBA offseason recap and early-season previews: Team-by-team primers3dNBA InsidersplayWindhorst: Kawhi is an 'unmitigated winner' following NBA's punishments (0:49)Zach KramSep 3, 2026, 12:54 PM ETCloseZach Kram is a national NBA writer for ESPN. com, specializing in short- and long-term trends across the league's analytics landscape. He previously worked at The Ringer covering the NBA and MLB. Multiple AuthorsEmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsFrom a team-building perspective, the most ruinous element of the NBA's punishment of the LA Clippers for salary cap circumvention surrounding Kawhi Leonard is the loss of five first-round draft picks, one each in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033.

There is only one precedent for such a serious punishment in NBA history: when the league similarly revoked five first-round picks from the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 for salary cap circumvention. In that case, the Timberwolves had come to an illegal agreement with free agent big man Joe Smith. (Then-commissioner David Stern ultimately returned two of the first-round picks. )Looking back at how Minnesota navigated — and suffered from — that forfeiture can help inform our understanding of how the Clippers might fare in the years to come, as they bear the brunt of the NBA's discipline.

Minnesota's precedentFor the Timberwolves, the turn of the millennium was a terrible time to suffer such a drastic punishment. They'd been the NBA's worst team for years after joining as an expansion franchise in 1989; for the first seven years of their existence, they never won more than 29 games in a season. But in 1995, they drafted high schooler Kevin Garnett with the No.

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5 pick, and their trajectory finally started to improve. The Timberwolves won 21 games in 1994-95, the season before Garnett was drafted, but steadily rose to 50 wins by 1999-00. Then the hammer came down, and the Timberwolves lost their first-round picks from 2001 through 2005. After winning 50 games in 1999-2000, the Timberwolves won 47, 50 and 51 games over the next three seasons — strong records still, but no longer showing evidence of further progression. Minnesota finally took a leap in the 2003-04 campaign, after offseason trades for Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell.

The Timberwolves won 58 games and landed the West's No. Minnesota went on to reach the conference finals — winning the franchise's first two playoff series in the process — before falling to the Lakers in six games. But that one superlative season proved to be the Timberwolves' high point as a franchise (at least until the 2020s).

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Minnesota dropped to 44 wins and missed the playoffs in 2004-05, then peeled off 12 consecutive losing seasons through 2017. Garnett was traded to Boston during that drought, and it took more than a decade to recover. So, how did the Smith sanctions ultimately affect Minnesota? On the one hand, the team still reached the playoffs in each of the next four seasons after they were levied, culminating in a conference finals run. But on the other hand, it's hard not to wonder how much more competitive the Timberwolves could have been atop the Western Conference, and how much longer their run could have lasted, had they been able to make first-round picks during those lost draft years.

Losing all of those picks conceivably cost the Timberwolves a title. Garnett was a 24-year-old just entering his prime in 2000, but Minnesota didn't have the resources to add more young talent around him.

The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across espn.com, theguardian.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.