You can’t even be angry, not really. You can be crushed. Kawhi Leonard delivered so much to Toronto in a year, a civic eruption of joy and community and celebratory murals splashed across the face of the city. He came here and played at astonishing levels and delivered a championship. He made Toronto come alive.And now he is leaving, and it is almost impossible to blame him. So many stars have left Toronto over the years, but Kawhi wasn’t leaving the Raptors because they weren’t good enough. They were. They were champions.On Saturday morning, in the kind of bombshell only the NBA delivers, Kawhi Leonard agreed to sign a four-year, $142 million (U.S.) contract with the Los Angeles Clippers. He went home.After a week of indecision the tipping point was a nuclear bomb: the Clippers traded for fellow Los Angeles native and six-time all-star Paul George of the Oklahoma City Thunder. They moved Canadian-born rookie guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and forward Danilo Gallinari, plus a ransom: according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, four unprotected first-round picks, another protected first-rounder acquired from the Miami Heat, and the right to swap first-round picks with the Clippers in 2023 or 2025. Reports say George and Kawhi met earlier this week, and George told the Thunder he wanted out a few days ago, a year after George re-signed in Oklahoma City on a four-year, $137 million (U.S.) deal. The trade came through. If it hadn’t, Kawhi might be a Raptor today.George’s own path is a possibility tree of its own: after seven years in Indiana he was traded to Oklahoma City in 2017 for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis. The Raptors actually thought they had a better offer on the table for George at the time: it involved DeMar DeRozan and more. But Indiana wanted to send George to the West.George had said at the time he wanted to be a Los Angeles Laker; he told ESPN later it was a 50-50 call in OKC to re-sign, or go home. In other words, Okl ...
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