Toronto, San Antonio talking Kawhi-DeRozan Swap (UPDATE: Done deal)

Leonard went from being the leagues most professional and quite player to the leagues biggest diva

 

spurs will probably be about the same as last year if not a couple more wins. Adding DD doesn't make them worse for a team that played without KL the whole year

 

i meant comparing to a spurs team with a healthy kahwi

 

I can't really empathize with players being frustrated for being traded. If you really don't want that option on the table negotiate a no trade clause.

 

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24128608/zach-lowe-kawhi-leonard-trade-spurs-raptors-nba

Spoiler

At the end of a mid-December practice last season, the five highest-ranking members of Toronto's brain trust called DeMar DeRozan into the office of Masai Ujiri, Toronto's president of basketball operations, for something of an intervention.

"I didn't know what the hell was going on," DeRozan told ESPN a few months later. "I thought, 'S---, I know I can't be traded.' It was like I was being called into the principal's office."

Ujiri told DeRozan he could be Toronto's Kobe Bryant -- a lifetime superstar carrying his team toward title contention -- if he cleared the last hurdle in his game: shooting more 3s. DeRozan started chucking over Toronto's next few games, and the Raptors hummed to 59 wins. The story appeared to have ended happily.

But there was a clear, perhaps unspoken subtext to that meeting: If we fail -- if this team isn't good enough -- you might not be our Kobe. Ujiri never feared a rebuild.

They failed. LeBron humiliated them again. DeRozan was decent in Games 1 and 2 of that series before vanishing in Cleveland. He finished the series 0-of-9 from deep. He spent the fourth quarter of Game 3, his last meaningful game playing for a team and city he grew to love and that loved him back, on the bench as the Raptors rallied without him.

Now DeRozan is a Spur, centerpiece of the Kawhi Leonard anticlimax -- a deal that can work for Toronto both as a means to that elusive Finals berth and the first step toward a complete teardown.

The price was low: DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl, and a top-20 protected first-round pick that converts into two 2020 second-round picks if it somehow lands in the top 20 this season.

The Spurs lost some leverage when LeBron James opted out of his deal with Cleveland, and lost more when he joined the Lakers without issuing any immediate mandates about superstar partners. They were going to lose a little more every day until training camp.

They didn't start with much, either. Nobody knows if Leonard is healthy enough to regain status as a top-five player and MVP candidate. (He still has to pass a physical.) Suitors feared his impending free agency, and his reported preference for one of the L.A. teams.

His camp made it very clear over the last week, to the Raptors and other teams, that Leonard wanted no part of Toronto, sources say.

The Raptors didn't care. They know any threat of failing to report is probably empty, since they can fine Leonard for each practice and game he misses -- up to his full $20.1 million salary.

Ujiri will certainly try to sway Leonard on the trappings of a diverse city a little outside the limelight, with an insane (in the very best way) fan base. He will have to do the heavy lifting, because that is too much to ask of a first-year head coach in Nick Nurse. A Finals run might help. Toronto has a chance at that. With this deal, they enter next season a hair behind Boston -- ahead of Philly -- in the Eastern Conference pecking order. (The Celtics could be 60-plus-wins special next season.)

If Toronto gets the sense by Thanksgiving that Leonard is leaving regardless, they can try to flip him to the Lakers or Clippers. Toronto won't make itself whole in such a deal, but they could recoup enough of what they traded as to make today's move almost risk-free.

If Leonard walks for nothing, the full rebuild is on. Toronto is clearly fine shedding the final two guaranteed years of DeRozan's contract, at $27.7 million a pop, and bailing out before they face the dilemma of signing DeRozan to another mega-deal into his 30s.

Leonard at his apex is good enough to transition the Raptors as Kyle Lowry ages -- good enough that you can justify avoiding a rebuild. DeRozan isn't.

[...]

This is an unsatisfying end to a bitter saga for the Spurs -- one that still flummoxes people within the team. It remains unclear exactly when they lost Leonard, or why the relationship grew so toxic. Leonard certainly has not verbalized his reasoning.

It annoyed some in Leonard's camp that the Spurs had him wait for a max contract after the 2014 Finals to keep cap space free for the following summer, but Leonard understood the logic and appeared to accept it, sources familiar with the matter say.

Team and player disagreed on the nature of Leonard's leg injury, and the best course of treatment. That happens. It should not fracture an essential relationship. Some combination of things did, and now Leonard is in the North.

DeRozan as centerpiece is disappointing return, but also one that reflects market realities. Gregg Popovich does not want to finish his career in a rebuild. The Spurs never showed interest in packages -- including Boston's -- heavy on picks and unproven players, sources have said. The Celtics would not swap any of their core guys, including Jaylen Brown, perhaps the most interesting Leonard trade chip in the league, without some assurances about Leonard's health and future plans, sources have said.

Philadelphia's potential package of Robert Covington, Dario Saric, and the Heat's unprotected 2021 pick didn't move the needle. It's unclear if the Spurs had interest in Markelle Fultz; the two sides never discussed him seriously, and the Sixers would not have parted with him, sources say. The Spurs made it clear any deal with Philly would require Ben Simmons or Joel Embiid (likely Simmons), and the Sixers weren't going anywhere near that, league sources say.

Talks with Boston and Philly stalled weeks ago. There was no frenzied last call Monday or Tuesday. San Antonio over the last four days lowered its asking price with a few other potential Leonard teams, according to sources around the league, but it was hard to build any realistic deal.

DeRozan will keep the Spurs relevant in the playoff race. They won 47 games last year without Leonard, juggling a hodgepodge roster. You know they will find a way to at least approach 50 this season, even if DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge jack 40 midrange jumpers per game between them. Those guys grind out regular-season wins. Pair them with good coaching and smart team defense, and the Spurs will be in almost every game.

But this is a blah long-term play -- one of the first times having a coach installed as the top decision-maker might have hurt San Antonio. Without Leonard, a rebuild is coming. This move only delays it. DeRozan is an All-Star, but not a franchise star who alone forestalls a downslope.

It's tempting to suggest the Spurs could eventually flip DeRozan for the sorts of assets that would trigger a proper rebuild, but he doesn't carry that sort of trade value. (DeRozan's role in this trade does not indicate much about his league-wide trade cachet. This is a unique set of circumstances involving a seller with zero leverage.)

It's possible Boston, Philly, and other teams loaded with picks weren't offering their best ones -- including the juicy 2019 Kings pick the Sixers and Celtics have divided like a summer timeshare. But a franchise with different priorities could have bid those sorts of teams against each other, and come out with an interesting collection of future assets.

For the Lakers, this a calculated risk that they can acquire someone over the next year without surrendering their best assets -- especially Brandon Ingram, a budding star. That is a smart bet, even having just watched Paul George stay in the league's anti-Los Angeles without so much as granting the Lakers a pitch meeting.

The 2019 free agency class is loaded. The Lakers have LeBron, cap space, and the league's most desirable market. There would have been value in the certainty of acquiring Leonard now. There is value in the sustainability of young talent, too. In refusing to pay full freight, the Lakers valued those things correctly.

In Leonard, the Raptors get the true, every-game-in-the-playoffs superstar they've never had. Lowry was hit or miss in some playoff runs, though he has been more reliable in the last two. DeRozan's postseason play has been all over the place, including an 0-of-8 low point in Game 3 of Toronto's first-round series against the Bucks two postseasons ago.

[...]

 

He didn't have the option to negotiate that into his contract.

Either way, I get that it sucks moving from a place your comfortable in, but you are in a league where you get paid millions of dollars and many players have guaranteed contracts that gives them all their money whether they perform or not. So this whole loyalty BS is annoying because the NBA is a business and teams will always operate like a business. It is what it is.

 

lol. Thomas is the Lil Bow Wow of basketball. Keeps bringing up the past.

 

Yeah if that's the case then that's complete bullsht on the player's part. I would absolutely take the team/NBA's side on that.

How can the law allow a player to commit financial fraud like that.

 

...without saying a word

 

without moving one facial muscle.

 

Pop: Kawhi you're being traded to Toronto

Kawhi: Toronto? Never heard of it

 

Thanks to KWL's behavior (and injury concerns), the Spurs had no leverage.

Let me state in unequivocal terms .....

The Spurs got bent over in this deal. (which isn't a bad thing) DeMar DeRozan, while putting up #'s, is soooooo overrated.

 

Your are correct sir. Well that's ****ed up players have conditions when they can get a no trade clauses. They should give up some guaranteed money for that option.

 

If Leonard wants to sit out, then he needs to forfeit pay for that year. If he tries to claim "injury" to collect pay while sitting out and team/NBA doctors disagree on his injury then I think Raptors need to litigate it under CBA 11.3. And hopefully this results in Leonard being docked a pay and then blacklisted from the NBA forever.

 

Yeah. Well not forever, but at least he shouldn't get paid while sitting out with no major injury.