Kawhi Leonard didn’t want to join the Toronto Raptors in 2018. At that point, the then-San Antonio Spurs star was hoping to force his way back to his native Southern California. He was traded north of the border effectively as a one-year detour. He won a championship with the Raptors, but immediately signed with the Los Angeles Clippers as a free agent in the summer of 2019.
It was inarguably the most successful rental trade in NBA history, but it was still a rental trade. Teams rarely want to give up substantial assets for players who are not willing to commit to playing for them long term. With Leonard again on an expiring contract, the fear that he could possibly leave as a 2027 free agent will inevitably limit his market this offseason to teams he would be willing to extend with.
To that point, on Thursday Marc Stein and Jake Fischer reported that Leonard was only interested in extending with two possible destinations: his former teams, the Raptors and the Spurs.
The Raptors and Clippers have indeed held “real” trade conversations involving Leonard moving back to Canada, Fischer reported Sunday. The exact return package, for now, is not clear, but Fischer noted a preference in sending Brandon Ingram back to Los Angeles instead of RJ Barrett as part of the necessary matching salary.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer reportedly does not want to trade Leonard. However, a deal makes plenty of sense on paper after the Clippers started a youth movement by trading James Harden for Darius Garland and Ivica Zubac for Bennedict Mathurin and a collection of draft picks. The Clippers still owe control over their first-round draft picks through 2029 thanks to the deal that got them Harden originally, so adding future draft capital should be a priority.
While the Clippers have maintained their innocence, it is worth remembering that the NBA is investigating the sponsorship agreement between Leonard and Aspiration for possible cap circumvention. If the Clippers are found to be guilty, they could lose more draft picks. Replenishing that war chest with someone else’s picks obviously would help.
How a Raptors deal could work
The Raptors control all of their own first-round picks moving forward and could potentially offer as many as four first-round picks and three first-round swaps for Leonard, though the final price would surely be lower than that since he is about to turn 35 and has a lengthy history of injuries.
The Clippers will probably ask for Collin Murray-Boyles, a breakout rookie from last season, but the Raptors will almost certainly keep him out of the deal as a necessary piece for next year’s roster and beyond. Settling on appropriate asset value through draft picks should be doable.
The bigger question here relates to salary. The Raptors have very limited room beneath the first apron. If they were to make a trade in which they take in more money than they send out, they will be hard-capped there. Any trade in which Barrett’s expiring deal is the primary outgoing salary would almost certainly do that, limiting Toronto in building any depth around Leonard.
Realistically, the Clippers are going to need to take back one of Ingram, Immanuel Quickley or Jakob Poeltl, all on less-than-desirable long-term deals, to make this work. The goal for the Raptors would, presumably, be to send out more money than the $50.3 million they’d be taking in with Leonard so that they could instead trigger a second-apron hard cap and have more room to build out their roster.
The Raptors, it seems, are hoping to make Ingram that salary, and that makes sense for both sides. Ingram could replace Leonard at small forward for the Clippers. He is not nearly as valuable, but he’s a reigning All-Star scorer at the position and could at least help Los Angeles win some regular-season games as they wait out the draft picks they owe other teams. Nonetheless, if the Clippers view the $82 million or so that Ingram is owed over the next two seasons as bad money, they will demand extra capital to take it.
The Raptors are coming off a surprisingly successful season. Scottie Barnes had a career year, and they won 46 games en route to the No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference. Despite a variety of injuries to players like Ingram and Quickley, the Raptors managed to push the Cleveland Cavaliers to seven games in the first round. Clearly, Toronto believes it is ready to make a leap into genuine Eastern Conference contention, and while Leonard’s age and injury history represent risks, he is the best single player available this offseason. If they can swing a deal to bring him back, they’ll immediately become one of the biggest threats in the conference to the defending NBA champion New York Knicks.
A compromise?
If Leonard is only interested in going back to teams with which he has a history, perhaps it would be something of a middle ground if he reunited with his former GM in Toronto, Masai Ujiri, who’s now heading up the front office for the Dallas Mavericks.
It appears that Ujiri is hoping that could be the case, as The Athletic reported late Sunday that Dallas has “registered interest” in making a deal to bring the 2019 Finals MVP aboard to pair alongside Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving.
From The Athletic:
The Mavericks and LA Clippers have discussed a deal that would send the seven-time All-Star to Dallas for a package that would include P.J. Washington, Klay Thompson and draft picks, said league sources granted anonymity to describe deliberations still in progress.
The Mavericks don’t have a ton of draft capital to dangle, as they don’t control any of their own first-round picks through 2030. They could trade 2031 and 2033, but that leaves them without control of a draft pick for the next seven years while they’re trying to build a contender around Cooper Flagg.
Those two picks seem like a price too steep, but who knows? You could make a case for Flagg as an All-NBA player next season, and with Irving and Leonard, the Mavericks could surely talk themselves into being at least a playoff contender and maybe more, depending on the health of Dereck Lively III and how quickly this year’s No. 9 overall pick, Morez Johnson Jr., is ready to meaningfully contribute.
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