Kawhi Leonard should have stayed in Toronto. You could’ve made that case in 2019: The Raptors had an elite organization, front office and medical staff, and were well-positioned to try to repeat as NBA champions. It was a good argument even after he left for the Los Angeles Clippers, joining Paul George.
The argument hasn’t gotten any weaker, and may now be closed. The Clippers announced Thursday that Leonard will be out indefinitely as he attempts to address inflammation in his troublesome right knee. This after the 33-year-old played only two playoff games last season with the same problem. He showed up to camp for the U.S. Olympic team in July and it was determined he simply couldn’t play.
He hasn’t been able to play basketball at his customary level since late March, and his prognosis is unknown. Los Angeles let George walk to Philadelphia in the off-season so the Clippers are essentially a 35-year-old James Harden, a surrounding cast and a question mark. Leonard has been in Los Angeles for five years and has three playoff series wins — one in 2020, two in 2021, none since — to show for it.
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He should have stayed. Sure, he was going closer to home, and you can’t argue that. Sure, those first couple of Clippers teams were jammed with veterans, and reaching Game 6 of a conference final is no small thing. Then he tore an ACL, then later a meniscus. The knee has clearly deteriorated.
Which meant Leonard needed to maximize his chances when he had them, and he should have known. The 2020 Raptors were a worthy defending champion in a weird year, all things considered: It still says here that had Pascal Siakam touched a ball in the first three months of the pandemic, the Raptors beat the Celtics in the second round and probably the Miami Heat after that, and then play a Lakers team they toyed with during the regular season in the Finals.
Add Leonard to that team and Siakam could have taken a yearlong sabbatical. Leonard, whose room in the bubble was directly beneath Raptors president Masai Ujiri’s, was still a menace as he tore apart the Denver Nuggets in the first round in 2020 and only faded a little in the second round. He was still at the height of his powers in 2021, which might have been enough to overcome moving to Tampa. But who knows?
Anyway, going to L.A. likely cost Leonard at least one more title, and maybe more. He left a great team for a good one, and he didn’t have time to wait for that team to become great.
Perhaps Toronto’s medical staff helped him forget that, too. There were moments during his masterpiece Toronto season where he wondered about his knee, too. Everyone knew the plan: Under the watchful eye of Raptors director of sport science Alex McKechnie, Leonard sat one half of every back-to-back set of games, along with other targeted games and practices. Only McKechnie could have been certain it would work as it did.
But some people whispered that Leonard himself wondered if he could get another max contract with a degenerative knee-related condition. Even the trade with San Antonio wasn’t as obvious as it became in retrospect: There were significant doubts in the room, before Toronto decided to pull the trigger.
And it played out as beautifully as any NBA bet could. Leonard’s run in Toronto was the stuff of basketball legend — that brutally efficient tour de force at both ends, all predatory defence, bowling-ball-bully drives, whisper-soft and robotically flat jumpers, and clutch, clutch, clutch plays.
Since then Toronto has declined, and part of the reason was the chase for another Leonard trade — nothing quite so lucky and elegant, of course, but the chase for another star is one reason the Raptors held onto Siakam and OG Anunoby too long. They held on and watched Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant and Damian Lillard slide by.
So what if the Raptors had agreed to a trade with Oklahoma City for George that would have sent Siakam, Fred VanVleet, some more salary ballast, and four unprotected first-round picks? -(The Raptors front office got the increasing feeling they were being used for leverage, and that deal never came close.)
What if Leonard had just trusted what he had? Then the Raptors could have moved talent for a bigger fish at their leisure and at a lower cost, reloaded after Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka and Kyle Lowry, and stayed elite. No Scottie Barnes, sure. But a better path.
Instead, Leonard chased the glitz and comfort of L.A. to nowhere, and the Raptors beat their own path to a deeper nowhere. Five years later it’s sadly, depressingly clear: Leonard should have stayed, for everybody’s sake.
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