It’s easy to understand why National Basketball Association circles have divided sentiments on the deal the Spurs and Raptors agreed to over the weekend. Considering it’s essentially a swap of two All-Stars who had hitherto played only for them, it elicited mixed emotions about such sensitive topics as loyalty and freedom of choice. Kawhi Leonard had been in silver and black since turning pro in 2011. DeMar DeRozan wore no other colors save for red and black through the last nine years. One forced a departure. The other was forced to leave.
To be sure, the Raptors couldn’t have missed out on the opportunity to nab Leonard on the cheap. They had just gone through a campaign in which their regular-season excellence amounted to zilch in the playoffs. They couldn’t have but seen their ceiling with DeRozan as their foundation, and they rightly weren’t satisfied, not with the Celtics back in full strength and LeBron James hightailing it out of the East. The development already led to a head coaching change, and there was no better time to retool a roster so that it would not just compete in the conference, but actually take the measure of the league’s best.
Where the Raptors erred, though, is in the way they boxed themselves in publicly prior to pulling the trigger on Leonard’s acquisition. During the summer league, they discussed the future with DeRozan as if he were an integral part of it. To then ship him out exposed their standing as duplicitous at best. Had they simply told him they were open to any possibility, they would have been more forthright about their position. No doubt, they didn’t want their resident top dog to be insecure, hence the assurances. The flipside is that they wound up throwing him under the bus.
For the Raptors, it doesn’t help that their move comes with significant risk. No one, perhaps not even Leonard himself, knows how much he has recovered from the right quadriceps injury that compelled him to miss a whopping 73 games through the 2017-2018 season. And then there is his stated preference to play for the Lakers. He’s in the last year of his contract, which is to say he needs to see — and be convinced of — the benefits of staying put before he gets to test free agency a la Paul George with the Thunder.
So, yes, the Raptors did well by upgrading to Leonard. It’s just unfortunate that DeRozan had to bear the brunt of the fallout. Needless to say, they’re hoping their gamble will pay off. In the short-term, this means legitimately jockeying for the Larry O’Brien Trophy. In the medium- to long-terms, this means not losing their new headliner this time next year for nothing. Theirs will be a whirlwind courtship. Whether it will lead to success is anybody’s guess.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994.
