Raptors roll the dice on Kawhi Leonard — and say they’re not done yet - Toronto Star
GM Bobby Webster has added the superstar to an already improving team and says there’s room for more moves if needed.
Toronto Raptors general manager Bobby Webster speaks to media during an end-of-season press conference in May.
It is a calculated risk that the Raptors have taken — a large gamble on health and the vagaries of team chemistry at significant financial cost — but one they say sets them up for even more moves.
They’ve got Kawhi Leonard now and an already improving team appears to be much better, but there’s still room to wiggle if necessary.
“If we want to go for it, we can still go for it,” general manager Bobby Webster said Thursday in discussing the official acquisition of Leonard and a two-year contract extension for him over the last week. “Maybe that’s the distinction, just a bit of a swing, but there’s definitely more left on the bone.”
The first swing was a mighty one, for sure. The Raptors got the 35-year-old Leonard and added two years and $115 million (U.S.) to his pay package, after collecting $50-million in the final season of his current deal. It is a huge outlay of money and time, but Webster feels the Raptors are ready to take a large step forward.
“If I think back to last year, I said the most important thing for this group was: Can we compete every night? Will we compete for 48 minutes? I felt comfortable saying that this group had a lot of fight,” he said in a 20-minute chat with the media. “That’s what you saw over the course of the season.
“I think the expectation this year is: Can we win every night? Does this group go into every night thinking that we’re the better team and we have a chance to win this game? That’s how I view this group. They’re going to be competitive, they’re going to fight, and now they believe that they’ll win”
That’s the impact a player of Leonard’s ilk can have. Coming off a season in which he averaged a career-high 27.9 points per game, was named to the all-NBA second team, appeared in the all-star game and finished seventh in MVP voting, he joins a 46-win Raptors team anchored by all-star Scottie Barnes.
It’s increased optimism around the team significantly as training begins next week, optimism that’s been building since the Raptors and Los Angeles Clippers agreed to the parameters of a trade in June.
The delay, of course, was due to a league investigation into financial improprieties by the Clippers in dealing with Leonard, illegal payments and the fallout of that probe.
And while it created some questions about Leonard (he was a direct participant in the salary-cap contravention shenanigans) Webster felt he knew the superstar well enough to vouch for his character.
“There’s familiarity from being with Kawhi seven years ago,” Webster said of Leonard’s championship-winning season with Toronto in 2018-19. “(As) a person and a player, we’re really comfortable. There’s obviously curiosity to know what has happened since then, but we had those conversations and we felt comfortable. That gave us a lot of confidence to move forward with the deal.”
Even as that probe dragged on, and even after penalties emerged and there was time to revisit the specifics of the trade, Webster said he didn’t feel comfortable demanding more from the reeling Clippers. Some might have tried to extract more, or pay less. Webster’s word was his bond.
“You have your reputation, and I think that’s really important,” he said. “When you agree to a deal, you agree to the deal. That’s important, not just in this industry but in any industry.”
So now it’s left to see how Leonard meshes with the roster when camp begins next week, and if he can match the 65-game load he carried last season. But what’s seen without question is that Leonard, who left as a free agent in 2019, has come back because he wants to, and it has given rise to new championship hopes in Toronto.
“The biggest thing when we first agreed to the trade, speaking to Kawhi and his rep, is that he didn’t want this to be a short-term thing; he wanted to stay here for a while,” Webster said. “I think that’s probably what people hopefully took away from the extension. We want to have a window here — whether it’s two, three years or beyond that — where we’re able to compete and put together a team worthy of competing for a title.”
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Doug Smith is a sports reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on BlueSky: @smithraptorsbeat.bsky.social.
