Bruce Arthur: Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors get a rare chance at an NBA do-over - Toronto Star

Seven years after the superstar departed Toronto, both sides get a chance for a sequel to the 2019 title.

Kawhi Leonard’s one season in Toronto was more or less perfect, Bruce Arthur writes, after he led the team through teams like a human flame-thrower.

Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote there were no second acts in American lives, which was clearly wrong, but the Raptors are a Canadian team anyway, and Kawhi Leonard is back. Tuesday, seven years after he left, the Raptors signed Kawhi to a two-year, $115-million (all figures U.S.) contract extension; he is now under contract with Toronto through 2029. And Kawhi has told the club he intends to finish his career in Toronto.

However it unfolds, it’s the rare chance at a do-over, in the spiritual sense, because Kawhi’s one season in Toronto was more or less perfect. He missed some games, sure. And yes, his uncle Dennis stood on arena loading docks after playoff games and chattered about how Kawhi wanted to play in L.A.

But Kawhi led the Raptors through Orlando, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Golden State like a human flame-thrower, and on championship parade day between two and three million people celebrated in the streets. In the seven years after he departed the Raptors spun into a post-title malaise, and the Clippers won three playoff series and imploded into cap circumvention hell. Nobody came out too happy.

Now the Raptors are doing it all again, and it’s different. At 35, Kawhi took about $5.5-million less than he could have under the CBA, and had already waived his 15 per cent trade kicker, which would have increased this year’s salary by almost $7.5 million; if you know Kawhi, or if you have paid cursory attention to his affection for money, you know Kawhi giving back $18 million without an under-the-table deal is not a small thing. Besides, the Raptors would have owed Brandon Ingram over $40 million each of the next two seasons; $57.5 million isn’t too much more.

The player option in the second year of the extension, meanwhile, is not seen as an escape hatch, per sources familiar with the negotiations. When James Harden exercised his player option in Cleveland this summer, it was to maximize the team’s financial flexibility: that resulted in a deal for restricted free agent Peyton Watson. Kevin Durant has a player option in Houston next summer, and could do the same thing. That’s what the Kawhi player option, as imagined, is intended to do for Toronto.

It’s a sea change, in many ways. These Raptors are still relatively young, with only three players over the age of 27; as Kyle Lowry’s appreciation weekend recently highlighted, the 2019 Raptors were a veteran crew. In 2018-19 there was an understandable urgency to every aspect of the Kawhi experience, with his free agency looming; this time there is a sense of comfort with the front office, and a sense in the Raptors organization that Kawhi is more at peace. it’s the difference between a negotiation, and a partnership.

So now you can daydream about a defensive demon lineup of Jamal Shead, Ja’Kobe Walter, Kawhi, Scottie Barnes, and Collin Murray-Boyles. You can get excited by a huge lineup of Immanuel Quickley, R.J. Barrett, Kawhi, Scottie, and Jakob Poeltl. You can wonder how the Raptors might upgrade if this team looks like a contender in the crowded East, and you can appreciate that even if Kawhi’s legendary efficiency erodes over the length of this contract, it will be in the context of a team whose young players could improve.

Kawhi got away with an awful lot in the cap circumvention fiasco, but in Toronto, most of that is already forgiven. And so, the do-over. When the NBA hammered Steve Ballmer and the Los Angeles Clippers earlier this month, it was for cap circumvention. Every team is expected to operate under the same rules, if not with the same advantages, and the Clippers broke the rules with a sort of blithe abandon.

But again, the cap circumvention altered the history of the NBA itself. The trade of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to Oklahoma City for Paul George was a set of dominoes that has determined two MVP races and an NBA title, and without the deal — and without the cap circumvention — Kawhi was more than open to returning to Toronto. And had he returned, that 2019-2020 Toronto team was a title contender, and likely a favourite.

Instead Pascal Siakam played like a man who hadn’t touched a ball in three months, the Raptors lost to Boston in the second round in seven games, and everything unrolled from there. Well, this is the second chance: for a Raptors team whose roster has flipped but whose front office still looks familiar enough, for a city still waiting for an encore, and for a superstar who discovered his preferred destination wasn’t the right place to be at all.

Maybe Kawhi doesn’t stay healthy. Maybe it doesn’t work. But now the Raptors can deliver a fast-forward sequel to that title season, and maybe get to work on a statue of The Shot. And in the best case you could even imagine Toronto retiring a No. 2 jersey one day, in a franchise that came to feel — as it did for Lowry — like home.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.