ONE CALL CHANGED IT ALL
Raptors GM’s chat with Spurs assistant began emotional road to acquiring Leonard
It began with a telephone call during the week of the NBA draft: the largest, most emotional trade in the history of the Toronto Raptors.
Bobby Webster was on the phone with everybody that week, but the call that started it all was to his old pal Brian Wright.
Webster is the young general manager of the Raptors, working under Masai Ujiri. Wright is the young assistant GM of the San Antonio Spurs, working under R.J. Buford. The two are considered among the elite of up-andcoming NBA executives. And Webster and Wright have been friends since they first interned together with the Orlando Magic.
If not for their relationship — their friendship, really — it’s entirely possible the Raptors would not have traded for Kawhi Leonard. Webster did much of the work to make the complicated deal happen and, in the background, did much of the due diligence.
The entire NBA knew San Antonio was trading Leonard after one of the most mysterious personal seasons in history. He was getting moved with one year left on his contract. The question was to where and for what?
Webster and Wright began their conversations at the draft, but the original talks didn’t go very far.
After July 1, when Leonard hadn’t been traded anywhere, the NBA went into rumour mode, its normal summer state. Boston was pushing hard for Leonard. The Los Angeles teams, the Lakers and Clippers, were actively involved. The New York Knicks made a pitch. So did others.
Quietly, in the background, Webster began doing serious research. You don’t get many opportunities to get a gamechanging player in the NBA. But this one came with more questions than usual.
Webster was keeping himself up at nights, worrying, over-thinking, wondering what exactly they knew about Leonard and, maybe more importantly, what they didn’t know.
“You don’t know when to stop,” Webster said. “You’re up at night. You ask yourself, ‘Did we look under every stone? ‘Are we thinking about this in every way possible?’
“This was a unique case because of a few of the unknowns. There was a little bit of the medical piece we were unsure about. Obviously, there was some uncertainty about the future. About some of Kawhi’s intentions. I don’t know if there was a moment when we said, ‘There’s a deal.’ Because sometimes you stop short. Sometimes you’re a couple of inches apart. I don’t know if there’s a moment where either side said yes. It’s kind of an interesting process to work through.”
The relationship between Webster and Wright probably made it happen. They could say things to each other that most trading partners can’t or wouldn’t say. They could be a little more honest, a touch more straightforward. They’d grown up together in the NBA. This was Webster’s coming-out party as a general manager. This was a giant move for Wright, a certain future general manager.
“With someone like that, you can explore more ideas than maybe you wouldn’t have (with someone else).”
And then there was the personal side of the trade, which made it all the more difficult. This trade tore up Ujiri and much of the Raptors’ front office.
They didn’t just like DeMar DeRozan as a player, they loved him as a person. They understand what he meant to the development of their program, of their rise as an NBA power, what he meant to the city, the country and the basketball community.
“That’s the hard part of it,” Webster said. “That weighs on you. You want to be respectful to all that.”
Then you put it all aside for cold and pragmatic thought. You have to trade the face of the franchise after a 59-win season because these kinds of opportunities come along only so often.
The DeRozan part of the deal is why the Raptors have been so secretive in talking about this trade. Normally, after a transaction like this is completed, the general manager, the president can give you a play by play of what went on. Every turn. Who he spoke to. When he spoke to him. How many offers went back and forth. How the deal was finally consummated.
But there’s a personal and painful side in dealing DeRozan. So much so that Ujiri has been surprisingly silent on all this and has told some people the emotional side of the business is getting to him.
He claims to not remember any of the details, which is his convenient way of not saying anything. For their part, the San Antonio Spurs have declined to comment on the deal.
At least twice, the Raptors thought the deal wasn’t going to happen. Maybe more times than that. “Deals happen, then they fall apart, sometimes within 24 hours, within 48 hours,” Webster said.
Webster won’t say if the Raptors offered up DeRozan or the Spurs insisted upon having him. At this point, it doesn’t matter anymore.
Through just a few weeks of training camp, the team has discovered Leonard to be quiet, surprisingly communicative, a great teammate and an unbelievably hard worker with almost no maintenance needed.
The new season begins Wednesday against a Cleveland team without LeBron James and with Leonard leading the best Raptors squad in its history.
But it really began with that first phone call.