Raptors Champion Gets Honest on Kawhi Leonard Leaving for Clippers

Leonard was coming off an injury that stirred controversy between him and the Spurs and was entering the final year of his contract.

Toronto carefully managed Leonard throughout the season, playing him in only 60 games, but it worked. The Raptors became one of the best teams in the NBA, boasting a 58-24 record, good for second-best in the league, and the team around Leonard was just as good.

Pascal Siakam won the NBA's Most Improved Player award in 2019, and the likes of Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, and Norman Powell rounded out a stacked roster.

Toronto Does The Unthinkable

The Raptors defeated the Orlando Magic in five games after a stunning Game 1 loss at home, then in a legendary seven-game series, Kawhi Leonard made a fadeaway jumper over Joel Embiid in Game 7 at the buzzer to defeat the Philadelphia 76ers.

Toronto was down 0-2 to the Milwaukee Bucks with Giannis Antetokounmpo, and strung off four impressive wins in a row to stun the Bucks and advance to their first NBA Finals.

It was capped off by beating a Golden State Warriors team that was beat up, without Kevin Durant for most of the series and without Klay Thompson for some of Game 6. Leonard earned his second Finals MVP as the Raptors won the first championship for a non-U.S. team in NBA history.

Free Agency Changes Everything

Leonard was an unrestricted free agent, and with both the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers fiercely recruiting the two-time Finals MVP, he had a tough decision.

Does he return to the stacked roster coming off a title, or go home to Los Angeles and try to bring a championship to his native city?

Former Raptors and Clippers center Serge Ibaka had some interesting comments regarding Leonard's decision on an appearance on "Hello and Welcome."

"I didn’t actually try to recruit him because I didn’t believe it. I thought he was going to stay. Yeah, he won. I didn’t believe he was gonna leave, you know? I was like — I didn’t think he was going to leave, actually. We just won the championship. We had a great team. He could take as many off-games as he wanted — the team was still going to win without him," Ibaka said.

"So he got a lot of pressure, you know? Whenever we needed him in a game, he’d be there. And if he had an off-night, he had guys to help him. So I didn’t really think like, 'Ah, Kawhi is going to leave.' I was calm. I was relaxed. I was like, 'We just won. Who does that?'"

Leonard signed, and Paul George was immediately traded to the Los Angeles Clippers in 2019, in one of the most shocking free agency moves of all time.