Spurs may have to live without Kawhi

Imagine Kawhi Leonard showed up at Oracle Arena on Monday night. Imagine he wore jeans with a white collared shirt and a black sports coat and he sat behind the bench clapping at all of the appropriate moments.

That is what people wanted him to do, right? To prove he cares? To show he’s still involved? To make some small semblance of a public display of brotherhood?

Now imagine Leonard was sitting there when the Spurs’ lead started slipping away in the third quarter of Monday’s 116-101 loss to Golden State. Imagine he tried to provide some encouragement to the guys playing their 75th game without him, and counting.

It’s difficult to imagine how that would have helped much. But it’s not hard to imagine how it might have hurt.

Let’s get one thing straight here: Leonard did not abandon the Spurs this week. If anything, he did everyone in the locker room a favor by staying in New York and continuing the process of what his camp and the Spurs both refer to as his rehabilitation process.

It became clear several weeks ago that he was not going to be ready for the playoffs. This week, various media outlets have offered scoops about his updated status, but this was mostly semantics. His status has not changed since mid-January, and it probably will not change until late June.

For now, Leonard is not around the team because — for whatever reason, and perhaps with neither side at fault — he is not currently a member of it in any true sense. At the AllStar break, Gregg Popovich told his players they had to approach the rest of the season with the mind-set that Leonard would not return, and that is the mind-set they have kept ever since.

Leonard never has been a vocal leader. It is not in his nature to be Steph Curry, pumping his fist and whooping it up on the sideline while recovering from his own injury. If Leonard had been on the same side of North America as the Spurs this week, all it would have accomplished would have been to increase the number of questions his teammates would have been asked about his status.

And as for his presence on the bench? Would the other Spurs have looked to him and seen moral support, or a reminder of what they were missing?

The truth is, whatever tension and whatever disagreement exists between the Spurs and Leonard is not going to be resolved between now and Game 3 on Thursday at the AT&T Center.

This has become too complicated to work out with one phone call. What is required, probably, is a series of conversations in which both sides reaffirm their commitment to each other. There still is reason to believe that could happen.

But as recently as a month or two ago, it still seemed like a slam-dunk guarantee that the Spurs would present Leonard with a five-year, $219 million contract extension known as the “supermax.” That no longer is a certainty, and in fact it now would qualify as a surprise if they offered it.

For a top-five NBA player with the prime of his career ahead of him and a clear desire to spend his career in one place, that kind of money is eminently justifiable.

But when that same player is suffering from a leg injury that has taken a year to heal, and when you consider that any “supermax” player would be expected to be the face of a franchise, and when you factor in the ramifications of dedicating that much salary-cap space to someone who might be hurt or might not want to stick around?

You can understand why that might make a general manager or an ownership group nervous.

The good news is a resolution is coming relatively quickly. Soon after this star-crossed season ends, the Spurs will ask Leonard if he wants to be in San Antonio. If he says he does, they will work something out, because it is in both sides’ best interest to do so.

But if it becomes clear that the situation has become untenable, there will be no need to waste any time. The Spurs might have 29 trade offers on draft night, and even though they might not get peak value for an MVP candidate, they surely will find at least one deal they like.