LET THE CIRCUS BEGIN
Leonard and Durant plotting Super Duo? No one beats NBA for summer zaniness Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard have reportedly compared notes on free-agent strategies.
Free agency season is here — and all eyes are on Kawhi,
It’s lunacy, this NBAfree-agency frenzy is.
Delightful, head-spinning lunacy driven by “well-placed sources” and speculation and trying to connect the dots, where something that’s true at 4 p.m. one day might not be true at 4 a.m. the next.
It’s lunacy where meetings are scheduled on a moment’s notice or not at all, where the bells and whistles clang and blow as teams try to find quick-fix ways of adding superstars or taking superstars away from rivals.
It’s lunacy that’s unique to the sport, keeping basketball on the front pages and leading the sportscasts at a time when some should be catching their breath and moving on to summer relaxation.
It’s social media lunacy of the first order — think of a Twitter or Instagram game of Telephone played on an electronic global stage, where someone hears one thing, its repeated and expounded upon and taken as gospel in whatever form it is when you hear it.
It’s complicated mathematics and accounting, with “max” contracts of almost $200 million U.S. coming into the equation and “super-max” deals larger than that, all played out against the minutiae of the arcane salary cap and with tax implications for years to come.
It’s players perhaps waiting to sign long-term deals until they have10 years of service and can command 35 per cent of the salary cap, rather than 30 per cent, and the numbers are mindboggling.
It’s lesser players waiting to see what’s left for them, or jumping at quickly offered deals in case they disappear after the first feeding frenzy.
It’s a fantasy world, but it’s also very real. Livelihoods and the short-term success of teams are at stake. And when the dust settles and decisions are made and contracts are signed, some of it will be proven true and some of it will be shown to have been a disinformation campaign waged by agents, teams and players league-wide. The Raptors — more specifically their star free agent, Kawhi Leonard — are at the centre of it, giving the whole fast-changing landscape even more gravitas in this area.
If reports are to be believed — and there’s no reason not to believe them in the moment, even if facts and circumstances could change on a moment’s notice — Leonard will hear from both Los Angeles teams, plus the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Knicks before he decides what he’ll do.
Highly respected and extraordinarily well-connected Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported Saturday that Kevin Durant, like Leonard a free agent, has been in touch with the Raptors forward about signing in the same place to form a new Super Duo — even if Durant is expected to miss most, if not all, of next
season while rehabbing a torn Achilles.
It’s a juicy tidbit to add to an increasingly confusing and confounding story, and there is absolutely no reason to doubt the veracity of that report. Whether it sways Leonard or not is entirely unknown and, given his personality, impossible to predict.
On Friday, Leonard was said to be going to meet with Magic Johnson, the Lakers and Anthony Davis to talk about the future and that was interesting. Johnson, of course, quit the Lakers — and, in an interview, badmouthed general manager Rob Pelinka as untrustworthy — and Davis is actually still under contract to the New Orleans Pelicans, but a note’s a note and it’s fun to ponder the what-ifs.
Quite aside from the comical nature of the times — watching overreaction to reports could be a study in the histrionics of being a fan, or even a reporter — there are serious consequences to whatever eventually happens.
Take the local defending champion Raptors, for instance. Not only will Leonard’s decision have a significant impact on them, but the teams chasing them in the upper echelons of the Eastern Conference also have franchise-altering decisions to make.
Two key members of the Milwaukee Bucks, all-star forward Khris Middleton and guard Malcolm Brogdon, are free agents and the Bucks lost backup forward Nikola Mirotic to EuroLeague franchise Barcelona on Saturday.
The Philadelphia 76ers face a huge dilemma with both Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris able to leave if they want. Butler has been linked to the Lakers — who hasn’t? — and his decision could determine whether Harris wants to return, and might potentially mean the start of another building Process in Philadelphia.
Last season’s other Eastern semifinalists, the Boston Celtics, are about to go through a sea change. It’s been widely speculated for weeks that Kyrie Irving is leaving and he’ll likely be replaced by Kemba Walker, whose departure from Charlotte will hasten a painstaking rebuild for the Hornets. Boston’s Al Horford is also on the move, and the Celtics might ultimately become the plucky underdogs making a name for themselves rather than the dysfunctional underachieving team they were last season.
The Brooklyn Nets may get Irving, or they may get Durant, or they may get Leonard, or they may get any combination of those three and the East landscape will change further.
Eventually, though, this entire exhaustive and exhausting process will play itself out, players will move or not, and a fraction of what people have been led to believe over this period of zaniness will actually have been true.
Teams and free agents can begin discussions on Sunday at 6 p.m. and players and their agents are going to leak “agreements in principle” — messages sent to other players and teams, because the official signing period doesn’t arrive until July 6.
Until then? It’s a bumpy ride, and a crazy one full of pitfalls and facts and fallacies. It’s fun, in some tiring way.
It’s the lunacy, the delightful lunacy, that is NBA free agency.