Bill Simmons: “Kawhi won 4 playoff series with Toronto and 2 with the Clippers”
Helps when Toronto built an all time great team
Yeah that Raptors squad was insanely well constructed. One of the best teams post Curry/Moreyball Revolution
As the years pass, the roster construction of that team looks better and better. They were really just that one Kawhi piece away
Eh, they were a LeBron moving conferences away. He would have beat them in 5.
Living in hypotheticals is so cool and edgy
Do you actually believe that? With the Cavs? I don’t think they even had Kyrie by then
He was long gone.
LeBron probably would’ve lost to the sixers alone
With how bad that Cavs team started looking before he left? Lol sure buddy.
“Moral victories is for minor league coaches.”
Probably my favorite team of the last 10 years with how well everyone fit together
The most underrated thing about that Raptors team is that we had all of our picks going forward. Not a lot of championship level teams can win a title, and still have the ability to make meaningful upgrades later on other than OKC lol.
Wow that’sa crazy point. Never thought of that
Yeah, we traded Demar, Poeltl and Keldon Johnson for a year of Kawhi and a championship.
Thats it.
It helps that the finals opponent lost two of its three best players
Raptors went through 3, #1 seeds to win the chip (76’ers, Bucks, Warriors) . I’ll wait while you show me another team that has done that. Raptors won all games during the regular season and the finals was not really close. Should have been a gentleman’s sweep. Klay played the majority of the games including the ones where GS got thumped. OG didn’t play a single game in the finals and was our second best defender after Kawhi.
With KD and Klay fully healthy, the Warriors would’ve easily swept the raptors. There’s a reason everyone says the KD warriors were the greatest ever.
Sixers are a perennial loser. The Bucks had only been past the second round twice in the weak ass east during Giannis’ reign there lol. They’re nothing special
Can’t ignore that that opponent has a strong case to be the most stacked team in NBA history.
Are dumb casuals still spewing this shit take? Klay played most of that series and the games he played most in were the ones Toronto dominated the most.
“Omg they only beat the Steph/Klay/Dray dynasty warriors after the #1 seed bucks and the super team sixers!”
Moron.
Right lol With as good as that team was. They still probably lost if there was a healthy KD playing. It went 6 games basically with no KD.
GSW was still the favourites. Same way the spurs was the fave with the knicks this year
Kawhi on the Clippers was incredibly underwhelming.
I wouldn’t be surprised if his next stint on the Raptors is underwhelming too. Although they’ve got more talented, young players. That should help.
It’s only underwhelming for the Clips because they traded SGA + a million picks for him and PG.
Different story for the Raps since Kawhi already won with us, we’re kinda playing with house money here.
You could easily predict the outcome in LA when Kawhi insisted on PG being there with him. The composure of that Toronto team was robust and balanced, but the resulting LA team was super top-heavy with less resilience to injuries. I think slotting back into an existing team without making other major changes in Toronto has the potential to look more like his first Toronto stint than his time in LA, but obviously there are a lot of variables in play. Time will tell.
This seems revisionist. I remember most people wholeheartedly believing that Clips squad with the addition of Kawhi, fresh off a crazy finals run, + PG was gonna be a major problem in the West.
Particularly with that squad coming off taking 2 games off the KD warriors prior to them joining, yeah nobody was saying that team will only win 2 playoff series in 8 years
Lol this is an insane and absurd revisionist take. That team for the first year (and the second) was absolutely ridiculous and deep. They had more than enough to win it all and were up 3-1 in the second round before they collapsed, which you can blame on a lot of things (Doc rivers is a big one here), but them losing was absolutely not a result of being top heavy.
You could easily predict the thing no one predicted. Since it was easily predictable no doubt you made a ton of money betting on jt
I’ve felt like I must be taking crazy pills with the talk around Kawhi this offseason. It’s like there’s either collective amnesia about how his last 7 years has gone, or I just completely hallucinated it and he’s actually been making deep playoff runs that I had no idea about.
The dude can still play, the Clippers teams were just objectively not good enough to absorb his injuries. You slot him into a team already built up to some extent, very similar to the first time around in Toronto and it could work. We will all find out.
He can play when he’s healthy, but we have zero evidence he can actually stay healthy down the stretch of the playoffs anymore. Even in Toronto with everything they did to limit how much he did in the regular season, he still was dragging his leg around by the end of the finals. I just don’t get why so many people are either assuming it will be fine, or think that it’s a gamble that’s likely to pay off.
Yeah cool. Let’s get Lebron to the raptors to truly fulfill “Lebronto”
He could win another chip, with Kawhi, in an ENTIRELY different country!
Sadly Rich Paul didn’t have the Raptors on his “White Board” of Lebron destinations, and the fallout of Drake and Lebron, I can see toronto being off the table.
Drake is too much of a cornball to be taken seriously by anyone. He has no weight in this.
I would love “Lebronto” to suddenly be a positive thing
The Scottie, CMB, Kawhi trio has got to be one of the most imposing defensive trios of all time. Any one of those 3 guys can lock up 1-5. PnR becomes useless against them. They’re gonna generate record numbers of turnovers.
Street lights were too bright
If Kawhi stayed, I think the bubble being a factor would have made the team’s continuity help even more than usual. I agree with Bill here. At the very least they reach the Finals in 2020. I think they win it over the Lakers.
I think Lakers win tbh i ain’t trusting PG13 also i don’t think Clippers had anyone to guard AD properly
Sounds like OP is talking about the raptors
They’re talking about Toronto, not LA.
Ahh my Bad
Amazing what Kawhi can accomplish when hes healthy for a full season…
I think his body probably couldnt hold up to all the tree planting
He’s back where he belongs.
There’s a world where Kawhi stayed, and we still somehow tanked in 2021 to get Scottie.
I want to live in that world.
That’s actually pretty hilarious. He really should have just stayed with the Raptors for a bit longer. I’m still shocked he’s going back there but it’s great for Toronto fans.
People also forget how insane that trade was.
We already had Jonas, Serge and Poeltl.. and a team built around a star calibre SG.
We literally traded away that SG for a better one and got rid of our third Center.
And then also got a SECOND STARTER OUT OF IT.
IMO that’s the greatest trade of all time, it’s insane that we also got Danny Green lol
Raptors depth in 2019 was insane
Tearing Kawhi down after all the deep dive segments he would do on his pyramid after Kawhi would have his annual hot 7 game stretch
I still believe he should have never left Toronto.
*Marc Gasol
Powell, Gasol*
stars forcing their way West and tanking their legacies will never not be funny. don’t they understand they won the figurative lottery by playing in the land of the Hornets and Hawks?
This just in: Bill Simmons can count.
Overrated
Lol people letting him get off way too easily imo he was supposed to take the crown from LbJ. Somehow LBJ time in LA is viewed as more of a failure than Kawhi it must be nice being a star who gets all the praise when things go well but gets to hide when things get ugly