june 30 kal
Even though:
a) my Raptors fandom is well-known;
b) my ability to speak intelligently about things that happen in the basketball world (both on and off the court) is well-documented; and
c) my dynasty fantasy basketball experience and/or bona fides (such as they are) is/are beyond reproach and as such I tend to have (pretty good) opinions on roster building, NBA salary cap rules, and the NBA collective bargaining agreement ββ
I was still overwhelmed when everyone and their brother called, texted, DMed, and emailed me about the Raptors reacquiring Kawhi Leonard today. And, while I am aware (painfully and sadly so) that this is not a basketblog, I'm gonna spend this post sharing my thoughts about that in some detail.
If this is a good place for you to stop reading and close the tab, I completely get it, but I have always believed that sports is not just about sports. It's not just wins, losses, games, trades, and so on. Sports is culture, community, and education. I went to a good high school and at least one good university and most of the things I know about the world I learned through sports or through the lens of sports. I know that sounds like I'm exaggerating for effect, but I'm not.
The trade, as reported, goes like this:
TO RAPTORS:
Kawhi Leonard
TO CLIPPERS:
Brandon Ingram
Gradey Dick
TOR first-round pick in 2031 (unprotected)
TOR first-round pick in 2033 (unprotected)
2027 first-round pick swap
two second-round picks
So, yeah, it's a big trade. Toronto gave up a lot. But let's keep on going.
Kawhi's salary for the next two years is just a bit over $100MM.
On top of that, it is expected that Toronto will sign Leonard to an extension that will see the future Hall-of-Famer end his career as a Raptor. That extension will likely be for two years and $123.7MM.a
It looks something like this:
2026-27:Age 35 season ($50MM)
2027-28:Age 36 season ($50.3MM)
2028-29:Age 37 season ($61.85MM give or take)
2029-30:Age 38 season ($61.85MM give or take)
Brandon Ingram, by comparison:
2026-27: Age 29 season ($40MM)
2027-28: Age 30 season ($41,904,762MM)
UNRESTRICTED FREE AGENT
Gradey Dick:
2026-27: Age 23 season ($7,131,511MM)
RESTRICTED FREE AGENT
TL;DR Toronto is paying out roughly the same amount of money for Kawhi Leonard as they would be paying Ingram and Dick this season and next (provided that LAC re-signs Dick as an RFA). Yes, Toronto is going to have to figure some shit out because Kawhi is going to be spensi in 2028-29 and 2029-30, and yes, Scottie Barnes' extension will pay him a bit less than $99MM over those two years, and yes, the first year of Collin Murray-Boyles' (assumed) rookie max will start in 2029-30, and yes, there still needs to be money to pay, among other people, RJ Barrett, but, the NBA is a grown man's league and talent costs money and it's not our money and it is what it is.b
This post has grown to a length (and depth, and girth) I hadn't planned on at the outset. All I really wanted to share with you were my first thoughts, shared with a handful of folks immediately after the trade was reported:
My instinct is always to stay younger, and I'll miss BI, but if the goal is to win, and to do it with D, you need a closer who plays D and who is a relatively seamless fit wherever he goes ββ so, like, it makes sense, and though the last few years of a Kawhi max extension might hurt, Raptors fans canβt (or at least shouldnβt) complain about a front office with guts and ambition.
Sidebar: shout out to the Clippers, who turned [James] Harden, Kawhi, and [Ivica Zubac] into [Darius] Garland, [Bennedict Mathurin], [Isaiah Jackson], [Keaton] Wagler, BI, Gradey (who is salvageable btw), and picks.
It's now about ten hours later. I still feel the same way.
Yeah, it's a lot of picks. And yeah, one of those picks might end up being a great player, or facilitating the acquisition of a great player. And yeah, there is risk involved in mortgaging a bit of your future for a bite at the apple ββ and if any team is familiar with that kind of thing, it's the Clippers ββ no matter what comes back.c And yeah, Kawhi is 35.
But it's Kawhi Leonard. Two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard. Member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team Kawhi Leonard. Seven-time All-Star and seven-time All-NBA Team member Kawhi Leonard. Two-time Defensive Player of the Year Kawhi Leonard. Seven-time All Defensive Team member Kawhi Leonard.
One of the greatest players in NBA history Kawhi Leonard.
Yeah, he's older than Brandon Ingram (whom I love, and will miss dearly). Yes, he has had injury troubles. Yes, he broke some of our hearts by not re-signing in the summer of 2019. Yes, we probably could have contended for a few more years if he had. Yes, his uncle is kinda shady and the two of them and Steve Ballmer might have conspired to do some shady stuff that led to Pablo Torre winning a Pulitzer.
But many people are somehow overlooking that 34-year-old Kawhi Leonard, the basketball player, had a(nother) spectacular season in 2025-26. Not "spectacular for his age." Spectacular. I might have been his best-ever season, statistically. And with a resume like his, that's saying something.
Let's look at a few numbers, rankings, and achievements.
π Kawhi Leonard scored 27.9ppgd on 50.5/38.7/89.2 splits this past season. This is crazy efficient, especially considering he took more shots than all but nine players in the league.e
π Kawhi Leonard ranked #10 in Win Shares, #9 in Offensive Win Shares, #6 in Win Shares Per 48 minutes, #5 in Box Plus/Minus, #4 in Offensive Box Plus/Minus, and #5 in Value Over Replacement Player. You don't need to be an advanced stats head to understand that all of those things are very, very good, and if you are an advanced stats head, so do you.
π Kawhi Leonard was 7th in MVP voting.
π Kawhi Leonard made the All-NBA 2nd team alongside Jalen Brunson, Kevin Durant, Jaylen Brown, and Donovan Mitchell.
π After an injury-plagued season (and, let's be honest, a few full seasons' worth of games lost to injury over the last seven years), Kawhi Leonard played 65 games in 2025-26, which means he played more regular season games than:
Luka DonΔiΔ (64)
Cade Cunningham (64)
Devin Booker (64)
Victor Wembanyama (64)
Pascal Siakam (62)
Zion Williamson (62)
Pascal Siakam (62)
Anthony Edwards (61)
Some NBA fans think a player is automatically washed after a certain age, and for good reason. Basketball is a hard game to stay great at indefinitely, which is why no one really does that (and why what LeBron James has done after 35 is insane). But Kawhi Leonard is very clearly still in some stage of his prime.
I was not wild about this trade when it was announced, but I understood it immediately. And, now that I've had some time to process, I like it. If the point of the game is to win the games and win a championship (it is), and if roster construction is intimately related to a brand new collective bargaining agreement, a very complex salary cap system, and newfangled rules re: tanking and first-round draft picks (it is), this trade gets us closer to where we want to be.
CBS Basketball writer Sam Quinn thinks the Raptors are potentially the second-best team in the Eastern Conference now.
Andscape's David Dennis agrees.
ESPN's Brian Windhorst (and, sigh, Kendrick Perkins) think that the Raptors are ready to contend due to this trade.
Sam Vecenie thinks the Raptors are going to be awesome.
It's not just me.
In the next few days, Raptors fans, folks are going to find a way to talk shit about this trade.f But after they're finished regurgitating someone else's points about why it was a bad trade ββ an idea I am completely open to by the way ββ ask them if the Raptors are now closer to or further away from winning a title in the next 3-5 years. Then ask them if they know which current 13-year-old is going to be the #1 overall pick in 2031 and which current 11-year-old is going to be the #1 overall pick in 2031. Then ask them if they know how the lottery is going to fall in 2027, 2031, and 2033. Ask them if they understand the NBA's salary cap rules. Ask them what the difference is, on micro and macro levels, between where the Raptors were in re: tax space, 1st apron space, and 2nd apron space both before and after the trade. Ask them when the current CBA ends. Ask them who Ingram and Dick should have been traded for and why. Ask them if they think Ingram is a better fit for this team, with this personnel, than Kawhi Leonard.
All of this matters because opinions are decisions and decisions exist in context. And contexts have contexts. They interrelate. They lay on top of each other and weave in and out of each other like contortionists playing Twister.
I'm not saying folks can't have their opinions or beliefs, nor am I saying that I am not open to listening folks whose opinions or beliefs differ from mine (with the exception of those whose beliefs are informed by hatred and bigotry).
I'm saying that the bar should be way higher for folks whose opinions get taken seriously about this kind of thing. Any idiot can go on their own podcast or livestream (or ESPN) and say all kinds of dumb things, and a lot of them do. But to assume those opinions are valid because of a network logo or a follower count is folly. The world is fucked largely because people who don't know anything about anything are in charge of everything, and I can't do anything about that.
But what I can do is try to bring the level of discourse a few notches higher. I can try to bring some kind of rigour to my own decision-making process. I can expect more from people who call themselves fans even if they don't expect it from themselves. And I can write hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of words that will find a forever home in the hearts of handful of people who, in reading some of those words, will know that someone out there thinks like they do and that they're not crazy to be baffled by the popularity of the various unserious and buffoonish blowhards in sports media.
I'm at the point of my life where I feel like I can confidently say that I know what I'm talking about when I talk about basketball. I'm not challenging some internet weirdo to some stupid debate, nor am I in need of a scolding or a "what you're not seeing is..." because I've looked. I've seen. And this opinion wasn't a knee-jerk reaction in the back of a cab that I batted around with the cabbie to pass the time. I thought hard on this, and only really wrote like, half of what I could have. But, like, there is simply is no compelling evidence that this is a bad trade for Toronto.g There just isn't.
It's risky, yes. But so is doing nothing.
Footnotes:
a Yes, that's astronomical money, but it's what established stars max out at when they achieve huge things, which Kawhi has. It's not my money so I don't care.
b Let the fact that Brandon Ingram got traded out instead of RJ Barrett put an end to the endless "Toronto is trading RJ" conversations that have never really made sense if you watch the team. He likes being here, we like having him. He is not a first option. But he is good, tough, strong, fearless, and does so many little things so well, and the only folks who don't see that don't watch the games and as such their opinions are dumb. Yes he has his flaws. But he works on his game. He also shows up in big moments, or have we collectively forgotten about Game 6 vs. Cleveland. Having a homegrown star in Toronto playing for his hometown team is unbelievably important. All the RJ haters can piss up a rope. If we don't sign him after this coming season (he's a UFA next summer) because he doesn't fit what we're doing? Okay sure. But let's put a pin it until next summer, yeah?
c IYKYK, and Y really should K, IMHO.
d That was sixth in the league btw.
e Fun fact: Ingram was just above him.
f I get it, it's an expensive risk to take on the last few years of an all-time great's career.
g Note to self: reread What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.