THIS IS KAWHI
Why would the Raptors, coming off a record-breaking season, trade their best player in his prime for a dinged-up enigmatic star who might only help for one season?
Try to get a grasp of who and what Kawhi Leonard is and two very different stories emerge.
There is the intensely quiet Leonard in public, a guy who not only doesn’t like the spotlight but aggressively avoids it.
Not many people will speak openly and on the record about the newly-acquired Raptors forward, both because they don’t want words to be even remotely misconstrued and because Leonard rarely lets anyone get close enough to develop any kind of accurate insight.
“Practically mute” is how one San Antonio Spurs insider portrayed him. Leonard treats a lot of questions and inquiries as intrusions he doesn’t want to deal with.
He’s neither mean-spirited nor vindictive. He just seems to treat the public persona part of being an NBA all-star as a nuisance to be avoided. He is not going to stand patiently in front of his locker night after night dissecting what just happened in a game. That is not his style and, really, it’s not that big a deal.
But it is an interesting contrast with his on-court style: a dervish at both ends of the court, one of the very best players — when healthy — in the league today and, at 27 years old, among the most accomplished.
Before giving up almost his entire 201718 season — he played only nine games because of a quadriceps injury — Leonard had been a two-time defensive player of the year, twice named to the allNBA first team, an NBA final most valuable player and champion, and a runnerup in regular-season MVP balloting.
He immediately becomes the most decorated player to ever wear a Raptors uniform and, after only seven seasons in the league, would seemingly have years of outstanding production left.
He gives new coach Nick Nurse more lineup versatility than the man he’s trading places with, DeMar DeRozan, likely would have, and the chance to build a defence around someone of Leonard’s proven capability will be a first for the Raptors historically.
Who cares if he doesn’t say much? It may be part of the responsibility of the job and his place in the game, but how he plays is far more important than what he does or doesn’t say.
“For me, from just looking outside, I’m anxious to know him some more,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said. “But what I can see (he) is a basketball player, a no-nonsense basketball player that plays on both sides of the floor and produces, a championship player.
“He seems to have a quiet demeanour and all of us human beings are built different. Just getting to know him more is what we are going to do. But as a basketball player, if everything checks out, he’s somebody that I think has proven that he’s the calibre of player that he is, and he’s proven it with championships.”
The “everything checks out” part is crucial. Obviously, Leonard’s injury last season was significant and the wedge that came between him and the Spurs. He had his own medical staff dispensing advice after working with him. The San Antonio doctors were always part of the discussion, but it became obvious late in the season there were differences of opinion on both his readiness and willingness to play.
But again, Leonard never spoke to the issue head-on publicly. It’s the confounding part of his personality, according to NBA sources. And he was available for the Raptors to acquire — with one year left on his contract — in no small part because of his reticence to speak freely in public, or from his heart, or often.
Only the basics of his family life are public knowledge. Leonard’s father, Mark, was murdered in 2008 at a car wash he owned in Compton, Calif. The NBA star grew up with his mother, Kim Robertson, and four sisters. Leonard and his longtime partner, Kishele Shipley, welcomed their first child, a girl, in 2016. Some of what is known comes through the prism of his uncle and business manager, Dennis Robertson, who has taken on a major role as an adviser to the native of Riverside, Calif. in the Los Angeles area. Robertson — who was with Leonard when he met face-to-face with Raptors management on Friday in a meeting that produced nothing but good feelings, according to sources — is the strongest male influence on Leonard.
Robertson was also closely involved in the ultimate ruination of Leonard’s relationship with the Spurs, according to multiple reports over the last NBA season.
Somehow, in part because there was little public disclosure of the rift that developed between him and the team, his departure was assured. The Spurs weren’t going to give him a super-max contract worth more than $200 million U.S. if he didn’t want to be there, while Leonard and his advisers never publicly stated his desires.
Meanwhile, that same injuryinduced divorce put him on the market. If the sides could have co-existed, there’s little chance San Antonio would have moved a player so close to his prime with such an impressive track record.
“All I’ll say is, without all this medical drama that there is, we have no chance of talking to a player like that — zero,” Ujrii said in discussing the blockbuster on Friday. “You have no chance. He would be signed to a new (San Antonio contract) and we wouldn’t have a chance to get him.
“This is why we have a chance. This was the risk that we are taking. We’ve looked at some of the medicals as soon as the deal was done and the rest will depend on the physical that will be done shortly.”
Leonard arrived in Toronto and met with Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster on Friday, doing away with the nonsensical notion that he wouldn’t report — forfeiting salary, paying fines and, in the extreme, being suspended while still not being able to get out of the contract that will pay him more than $20 million next season.
Leonard did not do any media — no one was surprised by that, and Friday needed to be about the departed DeRozan more than the arriving Leonard and Danny Green — but he did have his first face-to-face meeting with Ujiri.
The discussion certainly included chatter about what his on-court role will be with a team coming off a 59-win season, more so than either his long-term future or what he might say when he does talk publicly.
Until then — and there is no indication Leonard will be available to the Toronto media any time soon — trying to decipher just what he is has to be done from afar and through the words of others.
An enigmatic personality and a gifted basketball player. The latter matters most. The former could very well determine how fans welcome him.
“Without all this medical drama ... we have no chance of talking to a player like that — zero.” MASAI UJIRI ON LEONARD