Fred VanVleet revealed that on Kawhi’s first day in Toronto, he said he had no plans of staying: “I don’t know why they traded for me. I don’t want to be here. I’m not staying here.”
Well he didn’t lie
That would conflict with the second law of robotics.
“I DID NOT MURDER THEM!”
Technically the fall did it
And the Spurs are fine lol. They barely broke a bone
It ruined us for years man. We haven’t made the playoffs this decade??
You had like 5 down years after a nearly 20 year run of dominance only to win the lottery on one of the best prospects of all time in your very first really bad season.
Then you move up to 4th the next year and draft the ROY. Then you move up to 2nd again the next year.
You’ll be ok.
if we just sucked from natural regression after that run, it just is what it is. but executing an excellent bridge plan, developing him and being in great shape and having him torpedo everything was just extra tough to swallow. especially for a small market club that doesn’t attract free agents and means absolutely everything to the city.
but with that said, the insane luck they’ve benefited from over the course of the past few years more than makes up for it. so i have zero problem saying fuck kawhi forever, but complaining / crying anymore is a terrible look
This is very fair.
I mean this in all sincerity, boo fucking hoo.
Think of it this way. Without kawaii leaving you would of not got wembayama probably this century most dominant player.
After all the luck you’ve had you’re still complaining
meanwhile im over here engulfed in flames like
“WHY?? Why was i programmed to feel pain?”
Asimov couldn’t have predicted the aspirations of the world’s most famous robot.
Underrated joke
I mean I’m with FVV here.
He basically treated this as an extended work trip. He went on the trip despite not wanting to, did the job to the best of his abilities, and left when the job was done.
I still remember those videos after the bucks series, when he was essentially limping after game. Kawhi left everything on the court that year, and nothing that happened afterwards can convince me otherwise.
Do I wish he would’ve stayed? Yes. Absolutely. We had a great shot at repeating.
But either way I will be forever grateful for him bringing a chip to this city.
Whatever shady shit he did after is Clipper’s problem now, at the end of the day he’s scamming a billionaire in LA and I don’t really care.
With all the tempering during our championship season, the Clippers org brought all the bad karma upon themselves, and I’m enjoying every moment of their implosion.
We see a lot of players phoning it in and not giving a shit when they’re playing somewhere they don’t want to be. Gotta respect that Kawhi didn’t half ass anything in Toronto.
And then he got where he wanted to be and phoned it in. I mean playing for a contract I’m sure was just as much a motivating factor as winning for Kawhi, but luckily for him he got both.
His body has failed him. When he is healthy and playing, he is unreal. Let’s not pretend this is an Anthony Rendon situation lmao
It’s crazy how Rendon gave up after that deal, probably the worst MLB contract this century.
3.5 WAR over 6 years, only playing 257 games in total out of 972 possible, for $245 million is absolutely insane
Those stats alone are an F-, but he also kept Trout & Ohtani from making the playoffs & wasted years of their careers too.
I kinda have no sympathy for Trout.
He could have chosen to leave. He could have forced his way to play playoff baseball by forcing the ownership to get its act together. Instead, he has played playoff baseball once (3 games) in his career over 12 years ago.
He’s a hall of famer, no doubt but you kinda also think most of what he did …didn’t really matter either.
Weird career for a guy who was the best of his era.
Small correction: 2020 was the Covid year and the MLB only had 60 regular season games for each team. So he only played 257 out of 870 possible regular season games. Still fucking horrible tho lmfao
How did he phone it in after he went to the Clippers?
He may not have wanted to but his body definitely did
You can say anything negative about the Clippers, even if it’s made up, and get upvoted nowadays.
His body is pretty wrecked. I don’t think he’s phoning it in.
What?
I think we can say a lot about Kawhi but he definitely played when he could on the clippers.
this is a very cynical reading of what happened to him with the clippers. he just got injured for pretty much every playoff run besides the bubble
It’s crazy that Kawhi is now “phoning it in” now that he’s back home in LA where he wanted to be in the first place lol.
The thing of it is, the Lakers were his first choice, Jeanie Buss just wasn’t down with his and his uncles laundry list of demands and told him to kick rocks. Lakers most likely dodged a scud missile on that one it seems.
Not most likely, they absolutely did. He would never have stayed healthy there. Raps org seemed to have found a perfect, magical middleground of rest and playing him, right up to the point where in the 4th quarter of game 6, he was literally limping and dragging that leg up and down the court, on his actual last legs, if we had to go to g7 i dont know what condition he would have been in.
at the end of the day he’s scamming a billionaire in LA and I don’t really care.
I don’t know if it’s accurate to say he’s scamming a billionaire is it? Seems more accurate to say he and a billionaire are running a scam together to bypass the NBAs salary cap rules. Not saying that necessarily means you should care more (especially since they’ve gained exactly nothing from it in terms of success), just that it’s not really the billionaire getting scammed.
Nah, he played Ballmer. Ballmer thought they were scamming the rest of the league with the no-show job payments, which distracted him from the much bigger problem of Kawhi’s body being too broken to help them win a title.
Ballmer and kawhi were both scammed by Sanberg while trying to break nba rules.
crazy thing is, had those damn trees been planted there likely isnt any reason for Pablo to research this
Toronto Kawhi was one of the most Jokic “basketball is a job” motherfuckers of all time, respectfully.
also it’s such a cool thing, arrived for a year conquered the nba and then left. better than him staying and not achieving more, which is a very probable outcome with his injuries. that year was hard to top
And that’s good of him.
He was honest, up front and from the very beginning.
Many dudes do lie to teams, to fans etc.
I’m not saying he’s perfect, he isn’t but he was honest and up front about this from day one there.
Laughs in kyrie
man…going out of his way to say he’ll stay if they’d have him to wiping his feet on the logo in a matter of months is pretty crazy work
Did Kyrie lie though? You can’t predict the future. Unless Kyrie mentioned he never intended to stay that I missed. Kyrie wanted to be the man and then had issues and realized he didn’t want to deal with it and went to a new team instead of stewing.
Nope! And the general consensus in Toronto is pretty much the same way FVV feels. Everyone knew Kawhi was only staying for a year, but he won it all and gave Toronto something special for 1 season. He got to walk off into the sunset of LA with basically no animosity to how he left because of what he did here. No one in Toronto will boo Kawhi.
Banners are forever
I think a lot of people thought if the city showed him enough love he’d stay but it was always a long shot
Funny as fuck summer though, remember when CTV had a helicopter chasing a black SUV down the Gardiner because there was a rumour he was in it? Everyone was watching that shit.
I mean most reports are he was much much closer to staying than originally thought. The clippers making that idiotic trade for PG was why they got him. Which was a mistake
So the raptors didn’t bend to Kawhi wanting to make a huge franchise ruining fuck up
I see Kawhi jerseys all the time, and that’s a good thing. He should remain highly respected here, we got something very very special because of him, and of course so did he.
TBH I do give him credit for STAYING the entire season and playing, helping them win the championship in the end lol. I’m sure everyone knew he wouldn’t re-sign with the team, but he still got that championship.
He was an absolute fighter in the playoffs playing through multiple injuries
I respect tf out of him, true to his own values… don’t give a single fuck that the whole country worshipped him. Did his job, got the job done and he outtie.
For once
I think Kawhi has been pretty honest for the most part:
The man wants to get paid the most for the least amount of work possible
This is the American Dream
On brand. I don’t know about planting trees, Chris Paul, or why I’m in Toronto
even after that dream season 2019 he decided to leave, he fucking hated being there lol
Imagine if this leaked to the media or if raptor players in 2018 were doing podcasts back then and slipped up
It’s been alluded to. The interview with Lowry and Kawhi after the championship hinted at some friction within the team early on in the season but that they were able to keep it in-house and focus on making the most of the situation
Crazy how they had one year and everything lined up to let them win and curse the clippers for the next 10 years
I will always say this. Had Toronto not won the chip that year, masai would be viewed as one of the worst gms in the league. He managed to get the one year in like a 10 year sample size where kawahi happened to be healthy.
Healthy is even relative. His knees were kinda shot by the time they played the Bucks. But he gave it all he could and it was enough.
He came up limping after he dunked on Giannis in Game 4. I remember being terrified that that was the beginning of the end.
Some of those fucking OT games were so damn stressful. If only Eric Bledsoe didn’t turn into a literal pumpkin.
Yall got yours a couple years after so it worked out
He was limping up the court in that Bucks series.
nah, Masai already had a reputation as an A+ GM from previous work, and the writing was on the wall that the DeRozan Raptors weren’t going anywhere. It was a high risk, high reward trade that worked out for them, but even if it didn’t, it was still a reasonable risk to take given what their situation was. It’s not like they gave up a warchest of picks, it was DeRozan, a good role player in Poetl, and a draft pick one year out that was very unlikely to be a high pick even if the Kawhi trade didn’t work out. And in return they got back not only Kawhi but a very nice 3&D role player in Danny Green too.
Worst case, maybe if the trade didn’t work out well it would have dinged Masai’s reputation but with his existing resume and the reasonableness of the context (Raptors having pleateaued and not making an extreme overpay or surrendering a ton of draft assets) it would definitely not make him look like one of the worst GMs.
LeBron had just left, the sliver of a feasible window was now or never. Absolutely the right move whether it worked or not, especially with the juggernauts of Milwaukee, Boston, and Philly looming
I grew up a pretty big Raptors fan. I was naive/young enough at first to think that the nba was “fair” and that every team had a chance at winning every year.
But after watching each and every star player leave, and never really having a realistic chance at FAs, and the grizzlies fold, etc etc. I pretty much resigned myself to the fact the Raps would never ever win.
NBA champions pretty much always have a top-5 player on them. The only way the raptors were getting a top-5 player was through the draft, or so I thought, and I watched the Raptors draft Rafael Araujo.
I don’t blame NBA players, especially those that never lived in Toronto for not wanting to play there. It’s cold af. It’s a different country. You get taxed up the ass. Milk comes in bags.
So anyway - Bosh leaving was kinda the final straw - especially the way he left, to create a super team - something the Raps will never have, because it not only means one star player choosing to play there, it means three. I basically stopped watching. Even with Derozan and Lowry, I basically just watched the playoffs and a handful of games. For their third Lebronting, I don’t think I bothered watching any of it.
And then Masai did the one thing I thought was impossible - he figured out a way to get that star player. And they won. And I watched every game that year and it got me back into it.
The dude could have trade four first round picks for Greg Oden last season and he’s still the best GM in club history.
I’m still not sure why some raps fans are more mad about bosh leaving than Vince leaving lol
If I was Bosh, I wouldn’t stay here either at the time. We were a mess and our ceiling was a shitty first round playoff team. He got to improve as a player and not have to shoulder the load of being the first option with 2 other hall of famers in Miami. Given how his career got cut short by the clots, it seems he made a very good decision to leave.
I wasn’t mad about him leaving at all. Not at him anyway - it was an obvious right choice to leave. Mad at the situation sure.
If you’re gonna be able to keep anyone, it’s someone you draft. Him leaving was just the most stereotypical nba thing ever.
Dang unnecessary strays fired at Oden ha
This big time. Masai’s run up to the Kawhi trade was incredible. The trade’s he pulled off and the drafting he did was top 3 easily league-wide from 2013-2019. The Kawhi trade was literally just icing on the cake and most people supported it in the moment (just was tough to swallow as Derozan had been such a die-hard for us).
Worst GM in the league is kinda insane. The Raps were a top 5 regular season team for like a decade after he took over. Also he did the Kawhi trade as a last ditch effort before rebuilding. It was obvious KLow and Demar didn’t have what it takes so he had to do something
He also drafted Siakam, OG, Norm, Freddy, etc all at pick 20 and lower.
Like he may not be as highly regarded without the title but saying he’d be one of the worst when there’s teams like Charlotte and Washington out there is so disrespectful
This sub called Pelinka the worst GM in a league where the Hornets exist, and that was like 3-4 years after he won a title
lmao what? His draft history alone would have him with the best and he had numerous other great trade. They wanted to rebuild and the Kawhi trade was a form of getting off of Derozan while having one last chance at it
Complete garbage
He traded Greivis Vasquez for OG and Norm while drafting a championship 2nd option at #27. He signed an undrafted guy who ended up getting a FMVP vote. He built the only championship team without a single lotto pick on it. H3 built a team so good that even after losing our best player and another starter, we still finished on pace for 60 wins. Masai is so overhated it’s insane to me
100% worth it.
Even if it didn’t work out, they only traded Demar, Jak, and a late first. They didn’t lose much either way. You’re dumb af, lmao
I will always say this.
and you will always be wrong lol.
Crazy how they had one year and everything lined up to let them win and curse bless the clippers thunder for the next 10 years
To be fair clippers have been cursed for far longer than that
Raps deserve a second championship for being the only team to control the biggest diva in NBA history.
Didn’t everyone know he wanted to be in Los Angeles?
Toronto dealt for him pretty much knowing he was gone the second he could leave.
An all time gamble that paid off.
Might be THE all time NBA gamble
For the Raptors to even have attempted it in the Warriors dynasty era was insane. I feel like in many other realities they don’t get that Chip
In THREE ways the Thunder owes Masai for SGA lol. He could have traded DeRozan or Lowry in a deal including a 2018 pick to draft SGA, but he chose to trade for Kawhi instead. Then if he was really crazy, he would have sent a better offer than the Clippers (hard to imagine) for PG and you wouldn’t have gotten SGA.
Meh at the same time was it really that much of a gamble? Derozan was super overrated and clearly couldnt be an alpha and carry us esp since his defense wasnt great. I was happy with the trade at the time but i can see why people would say its a gamble
Yeah it was a gamble since everything they got back for trading Derozan was gone after the season. Without a ring, it would essentially have been Derozan traded for a year of heartbreak and nothing else
It wasn’t a gamble. They gave up almost nothing for him.
Trading DeRozan isn’t an all time gamble. They were never going to make it to the finals with him anyway.
given all the locker room & FO drama with the spurs i doubt anyone who was in the kawhi sweepstakes thought theyd be getting a franchise pillar forever anyway
Like he was a very distressed asset who was going to be a short time propellant for a team in an ideal scenario & raptors read that correctly
Yeah, this isn’t a story. It is only a story because it is so funny that he straight up told his teammates so much so.
Yes, vocally. Kawhi wasn’t trying to just force his way out of SA, he was trying to force his way out of SA specifically to LA. When it happened everyone knew it was an all-in one year rental, he (Uncle Dennis) was adamant they were going to LA asap. It just changed in the public mind because they won the title and he acted like he would then entertain the thought while LAC lined up their moves.
This is just funny that he was straight up saying that shit to his teammates
It did.
The reporting at the time of the trade was Kawhi did not want to play in Toronto and was threatening to not even show up.
https://sports.yahoo.com/unhappy-kawhi-leonard-really-sit-next-season-rather-reporting-raptors-212933174.html
This wasn’t secret at any point
If you watched the team back then, in hindsight after we won & a couple interviews you could see some guys did not fuck with Kawhi on a personal level.
Forever grateful for what he did but yeah, idk how we lucked out medically with him that one season.
JJ Redick talked about how everyone on the Sixers knew Butler wasn’t staying when he was traded there. He said it was no secret he wanted to go to Miami.
Seems like Kawhi didn’t have the Aspiration to re-sign with Toronto.
Be careful not to choke on your aspirations… kawhi
Kawhi Leonard: A Tree Story
He was pining for Los Angeles.
You miss 100% of the aspirations you don’t aspire to
Thanks Magic, as always.
No fine this time?
Couldn’t see the forest for the trees
hilarious! truly original wordplay, please make a similar comment in every Kawhi thread
It’s oddly comforting to know he would have demanded a shell corporation and a dictator’s treatment no matter where he signed.
It’s still so crazy to me how a guy can win a ring and finals mvp on his FIRST year on a team and still just pick up and leave like that
Some superstars you just can’t do anything for and Kawhi is one of them, he wanted to be in LA no matter what.
Honestly, as a superstar, you can look at contracts and teams differently. When every team in the league would offer you a max contract, that is when you get to start thinking about things like where the team is. Honestly, if I was getting max contract money, I would wanna go live in LA (especially if I was from there) and enjoy the time there instead of staying in the one city that is in another country that just makes it harder for you to get in and out.
If I wasn’t a star player, every decision I make would just be whoever offers me the most money, that is where I am going. But if everyone is paying me the same, why would I not choose the spot that makes me the happiest.
people complain about Los Angeles and like every city it has its issues but if you’re rich, it’s a great place to live so to your point, if you’re making that much money, Los Angeles is an incredible destination
Also as someone who also grew up in So Cal, we ain’t built for that Toronto weather. Yes we’re little bitches. No I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I actually did move from LA to Toronto. It turns out I freaking love Toronto too, and it would absolutely be a great city to be filthy rich in.
But you can’t beat the LA weather.
Born and raised in Phoenix so know what you mean. 65°, need to have a sweatshirt and jacket on, maybe gloves. I’m built for 115°, not 68° since we don’t have winter in Phoenix anymore.
It was 65 in my house today and I used a heat fan. At least my cat laid next to it too so we can be little bitches together.
Yesterday it was -20 and I’m south of Toronto lol
Yeah I ain’t built for that
it’s not our fault they chose to live somewhere horribly cold
we never had a chance.
kawhi is from Compton. LA is his home.
To fans it is just another team, but the dude was forced to pack up his life and move to another country. Nothing wrong with wanting to come back to your hometown after you fulfilled your contractual obligation.
Only one who forced him out of SA was himself.
He’s from San Diego lol and he was willing to stay if they met his insane and dubious demands allegedly
He’s from Riverside. He spent 2 years in San Diego for college.
That’s like saying KD is from Texas lol
he’s from inland empire. I feel like any inland empire native is adaptable to be a Los Angelian or San Diegan. Kawhi is pretty much the embodiment of chill soCal native
They meant Californiatown
Dude wasn’t just homesick, he had delusions of grandeur and Ballmer indulged him.
But he worked in San Antonio for 7 years and was a multimillionaire. In no other sport do the pros make this big of a deal about being ‘home’. Like none of the Blue Jays are Canadian.
It’s part that the NBA is a superstar league and part salary cap. That ends up meaning that a guy like Kawhi, well prime Kawhi, will always make max money, so he can pick whatever team he wants and that has space. Not to mention he’s got rings, so he doesn’t have that pressure either
Most guys can’t really do that in other leagues. Going to your hometown team often involves leaving a lot of money on the table, if they even want you in the first place
I also don’t think it’s that big of a deal in the NBA. Kawhi’s been the only “I have to be at home” FA in a while off the top of my head. Maybe Kyrie
He and the clippers got what they deserved
Kawhi got hundreds of millions of dollars
Balmer already had him ready to plant trees
Denis probably had deals set up years before
Leaving all that to go to the CLIPPERS is still wild to me.
If the last few years have been any indication after winning that second title he has been pretty content to just chill and collect checks
Like yes he would prefer if the team was winning but he’s not exactly upset that the team is losing
Clippers at that point were amazing on paper with prime PG and Kawhi joining. It just never materialized
He’s from LA/SD and wanted to go home. Simple as that. I went to school with his cousin the summer of and she told me exactly that. It wasn’t a secret. If you have the economic power to work in nearly any major city in the US, it makes complete sense some people will fixate on one location.
I don’t see the issue. He did what would make him happy, he fulfilled his contract to the best of his ability with the Raptors and then went where he wanted.
It is indeed hard to believe somebody would leave a team he just won a championship with.
The Aspiration deal however showed us there were 28 million reasons for Kawhi to leave. The 28m is just what we KNOW of too. There’s got to be more. Kawhi signed the Aspiration deal in 2022 when he re-signed with the Clippers. But he initially signed with the Clippers in 2019. Did Kawhi have no other such promo deals when he signed in 2019? I find that hard to believe as well.
Imo its ridiculous that Kawhi is just playing games for the Clippers like nothing is wrong. I know the investigation is pending but its taking way too long. There’s already enough evidence to indefinitely suspend him.
You gotta love Freddie, he’s right, him, the team, us fans, can’t be mad at Kawhi, he delivered, he made his teammates a ton of money, he put the organization at a higher level league wise, and he never let his feelings of not wanting to be here take away from his effort on the court.
We probably repeat or at least make the Finals with him again but there’s a whole lotta teams in the league with richer histories than us that don’t have a championship or have just the one as well
Kawhi, for those reasons you mentioned, will probably go down as the greatest one-year rental in NBA history. And a Raptors legend, I’m sure.
Shame that he and his camp are so scummy though.
He is a Raptors legend.
I’ve got mixed feelings about Kawhi’s antics though. He’s scummy in a scummy league with scummy broadcasting deals (blackout games, wtf?), with scummy reffing, with scummy scheduling, with scummy awards voting… Like, on one hand, he’s just an employee working for a billionaire’s toy. As fans, we may not like it, but all his scummy stuff is just work and $ related. He isn’t going around beating women, racking up DUIs, or whatever actually scummy shit some dudes are doing.
Literally don’t hate the player hate the game
Fuck that I’m hating both lol
Yeah man, most franchises would trade 10 years of playoff run for 1 championship.
Besides, the greatest Raptor ever (Lowry) got to cap his run with us with a ring.
7 straight years of top seed with a ring at the tail end of his prime, the most successful period of Raptors history.
Sucks derozan couldn’t take them to the top of the hill with the team as well. Gotta be so brutal to be a career player for a small market team and then the year after you leave they win the championship. Lol
small market lol
Same thing I was thinking. Man the whole country of Canada came out for that championship parade that’s not no damn small market lol
Based Raptors fan, I respect the take
Lots of people don’t get that, yes Kawhi would have been better off career wise by staying there but you can’t hate on a guy for wanting to choose his hometown over a place he didn’t want to go to to begin with
At the time it wasn’t a terrible idea to team up with PG in his hometown either
Honestly it’s kind of a testament to the organization that according to the reports, he was only considering the Clippers or Toronto at the end and the Clippers were the ones willing to do all the shady shit for him and trade for PG.
Clippers were desperate to compete with lakers in any way possible and they got karma for their shady deals
And in the process they created today’s fucking OKC goddammit
ballmer the hero small market teams needed
Ballmer knows ball. It’s literally in his name. Big if true.
Driven over Given baby!
Streetlights Over Spotlights
And because of Kawhi coming to LA, the Clippers made the 2nd worst trade of all time for giving up all those assets for PG thinking they will replicate what Kawhi did in Toronto.
Lakers were at least briefly considered. It was reported at the time that Kawhi asked the Lakers for all sorts of shady deals and Jeanie had to flat out say that it was illegal.
Its always been a safe bet that whatever team Kawhi signed with agreed to give him illegal stuff.
Yea even the RDA guy who was probably some Lakers staffer was reporting Kawhi was gonna join. I bet Kawhi said he was open to joining but then made all types of crazy demands and the Lakers declined
As a Bucks fan - I’ve only seen a few players in my 40ish years play at such an interstellar extraterrestrial level for a two week stretch as Kawhi in those playoffs.
All the Raptors played great but Kawhi was on another planet.
And even then he was clearly somehow doing it on one leg by the second half of the playoffs.
Exactly. Then the summer where he’s available right afterwards?
When the lakers didn’t land him, that’s when I questioned what Jeanie actually does all day.
Kawhi never wanted to go to the Lakers. He was using them as leverage to force the Clippers to get another star. We’ve seen like a superstar use the Lakers as leverage every offseason this isn’t something knew.
I hate when videos like this start with a preview clip. In this it happens like 10s later.
That was so bad. I thought Reddit glitched at first.
It’s the only way to hold the attention of the common clay of the west.
Common Klay
It ruins the ‘punchline’, why do people do this?
It captures the 1 second attention span that most internet users have
it’s so fucking annoying. especially when its seamless like this, makes it hard to follow.
Which is weird because the title of the post already “previewed” the quote. Tiktok video mentality.
Bro left his peak in Toronto too
I thought everyone knew this from like, day one? He didn’t want to be in Toronto, but still got them a championship.
Pretty sure this is the first time an actual player confirmed it. Before it was rumors and leaks. This is afaik the first ever official 100% set in stone moment.
Yeah I thought this was known. This exact phrasing too
Holy shit do we need to hear the clip previewed in the same clip?
What plays at 3s is already played at 15s. Attention spans are fucking cooked.
Yeah dog, started noticing that a year or two ago. You have to preview the highlight of a 15 second video before the video starts so people don’t lose interest. We are cooked
I’m sure Raptors do that trade again, especially knowing the season ended in a trophy, you play to win chips and they did just that.
Edit: removed typo
Just making the finals and they do that 100⁄100. I love Demar and will always consider him one of the absolute best players we ever had but that trade needed to happen.
Exactly, fact is, fans will sit here and debate “would you take a ring (or multiple rings) for X years of stinker season after stinker season”. This is kind of that. Raptors have had some rough years since, had to trade maybe the most popular guy on the team to do it, but they got that ring, finally. It’s kind of an awesome story when you think about it, other than for Demar Derozan.
And I can’t imagine any Raptors fan really holds that much ill will towards him for not staying (as one myself). Dude was a disgruntled player - who could have stayed disgruntled after the trade - who got traded to Canada on the last year of a deal and still worked his fucking ass off to get a ring. Sure that’s a lot to do with personal satisfaction for him, but that’s about as good of a “risk it all for one year of basically an elite mercenary” as the team and fans could have hoped for.
And seeing how Khawi’s career unfolded since, it’s a blessing in disguise for the Raptors. Seems like they got the last real “elite” season of Khawi
I’m glad Kawhi destroyed the clippers and helped Okc make a possible destiny with Shai being Canadian..
I’m grateful for Kawhi, but I’m happy for what the Clippers are going through.
FVV confirming what everyone already knew at the time.
Ring culture gets players payed. FVV got like \(180M off that run. OG \)200M. Siakam $310M.
Basically every young contributor got a max out of Kawhi’s Canadian adventure.
I’ll always love Kawhi, he made the most of his time and was an integral piece of that championship run. I really do feel he gave us everything he could. That being said I think we dodged a massive bullet by him choosing to leave. Dude was never the same after that season.
No hate towards Kawhi for this, he was 100 from day 1, we got our chip
That 2020 Raptors team was still GREAT without Kawhi
He should have stayed to defend that title imo. I think the Raptors team would have had a legit chance to repeat
This was known pretty early on into the season but the Raps kept it lowkey and didn’t let it fully leak to the media. There were reports of issues within the team early on in the season but I think once they realized they actually had a chance to win they simply focused on the task at hand and the drama died down a bit.
Kawhi should’ve stayed though man, I think we could’ve repeated in 2020 with him. We were a great team without him even and then covid completely killed us.
Yeah we sort of knew, which is why we still credit him for playing through the pain during those playoffs. He could have quit at any time and gotten to LA sooner.
Shit writes itself.
Forget Clipped. I can’t wait for Unced.
Aspirated?
Choking is also part of the Kawhi as Clippers experience
Should have stayed, I guess he got to enjoy the sunshine.
Still need an anime adaptation of that Raptors run
Came here, won us our first title, and dipped.
The problem was that Toronto already has too many trees. This man about planting trees, he looked around and saw that work was already done, had to take his talents to LA, where they lack trees. He’s pretty much Captain Planet mixed with Johnny Appleseed.
It’s sad how he had such a great career all to have it crashing down with crap no one expected.
I mean that’s honestly so respectable of Kawhi to do that. Let them know early and didn’t give them any BS or any confusion on what his intentions were.
Does Kawhi have a passion or love for any team he’s ever been on? I feel like he just sees basketball as mostly a job he can’t wait to retire from
Despite whatever he said though, he gave it his absolute all even limping his way to the finish line. Can’t speak to his character with the Clippers now, but he was completely focused on winning a chip once the season started.
They got their ring and didn’t have to put up with the rest of his bullshit, so sounds like they won.
I was so surprised he even suited up for us lmao
Pop knew he wanted to be in LA and so he sent Kawhi to the other side of the continent, in another country, where it snows in winter