The San Antonio Spurs enter this summer with significant uncertainty regarding their top star for the first time in nearly two decades. Not since Tim Duncan flirted with going to the Orlando Magic in 2000 have the Spurs had to deal with the prospects of losing their star player, but the apparent rift between the franchise and Kawhi Leonard threatens that incredible run of continuity.
Leonard missed all but nine games this season due to a lingering quadriceps injury and spent the majority of the second half of the season in the New York area to be with his doctors. As weeks of Leonard’s absence became months and ultimately the entire season, it was apparent that the Spurs were just as frustrated as everyone else at the lack of updates regarding his status, with Gregg Popovich regularly referring to “Kawhi’s group” as the ones reporters needed to ask about his injury.
This summer is critical for Leonard as he is able to re-sign with the Spurs on a super-max extension if they were to offer it to him, which would pay him $219 million over the next five seasons. However, San Antonio is understandably wary of handing out that extension to a player that missed an entire year with a mysterious quad injury and there have been grumblings for months that Leonard could find himself on the trade block.
On Tuesday, ESPN’s Mike C. Wright and Ramona Shelburne offered up a detailed report into what has happened with the Spurs relationship with Kawhi and how it got to this point. It’s a thorough look at the situation, but one nugget in particular stood out as they said there were some in the Spurs organization that believed Leonard’s camp was purposefully straining the relationship in order to orchestrate a trade to a bigger market.
Multiple league sources also told ESPN that the Spurs have grown worried that Leonard’s group has an ulterior motive to fray the relationship and get Leonard traded to a larger market such as Los Angeles (Leonard’s hometown) or New York or Philadelphia (Robertson lives in New Jersey).
One source close to Buford said the longtime executive admitted to him that he’s constantly losing sleep over how and why the relationship with Leonard has disintegrated.
Dennis Robertson is Leonard’s uncle and business manager and the Spurs apparently believe he and his agent Mitch Frankel have been actively trying to worsen the relationship between team and star to facilitate a trade to one of the league’s top markets. Based on this information, it would seem as though Leonard would be looking for a deal to one of five teams, the Lakers, Clippers, Sixers, Knicks, or Nets. The Sixers would, by far, be the best on-court fit right now for Leonard if he were to be interested in continuing to win championships and Philadelphia also has enough assets to possibly tempt San Antonio into a deal.
The Lakers have already been reported as having interest in Leonard, but whether they’d be willing to part ways with enough of their key young players to land him remains to be seen. It’s almost impossible to figure out how the Clippers, Knicks, or Nets could package together an enticing offer that would meet the Spurs’ value for Leonard, but maybe they’d be willing to sell the farm to land him.
What makes the Sixers possibility even more intriguing is that Leonard has been seeing Dr. Jonathan Glasgow, who ESPN reports has professional relationships with the Sixers and New Jersey Devils, which means of all the teams in the running, Philadelphia would likely have the best understanding of his injury. It still seems like a long shot that Leonard will be traded, but what started as a wild rumor now seems to have some legitimate legs to it and you can be assured plenty of teams will try to land the superstar forward in hopes he returns at full strength and gets back to the MVP-caliber play he showed a year ago.
