Kawhi Leonard like many other free agents such as Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, DeMarcus Cousins, Klay Thompson, Jimmy Butler, and Kemba Walker have big decisions to make this off-season regarding their family’s future.
Leonard will be tasked with making the decision of is Toronto the place he and his family feel comfortable with long term or is that somewhere else.
.@SedanoESPN offers his opinion on what @kawhileonard might do this summer. #WeTheNorth #NBAPlayoffs #NBA #SportsCenteratNight pic.twitter.com/XCuKmME2kc
โ Landon Buford (@LandonBuford) May 14, 2019
Enter ESPN’s, Jorge Sedano was a guest on Sports Center @ Night and gave his opinion on what he thought Leonard would do in this off-season.
โYou don’t buy a house worth tens of millions of dollars if you don’t plan on living in it. Kawhi Leonard bought a house in Northern San Diego County, which is pretty close to where we are at. Maybe he can borrow Kobe’s chopper or something to play for the Clippers or the Lakers if you’re not going to live in it. I’m no buying Toronto even if they win a championship, Neil [Everett]. I don’t think that he is sticking around because if anything he can say hey, I delivered on my promise I’m out,โ said Sedano.
That was echoed last month byย Bleacher Report’s senior writer Ric Bucher, who was a guest on the Scoop B Radio Podcast. During his appearance, Bucher and Brandon โScoop Bโ Robinson weighed the pros and cons that Leonard will face this summer.
Robinson asked this question: Do you see a scenario, first and foremost, if the Toronto Raptors were to make the NBA Finals, theyโd be the first non-U.S. tea to appear in the NBA Finals, Canada is our neighbor in North America, but letโs say, hypothetically, the Raptors win the NBA Finals. Do you see a situation where heโd still leave?
โYes. Yes. Now, I think certainly, simply because it depends on where heโs going and what theyโre offering. If heโs looking at the Clippers, and I would think that, I mean, if he leaves, my expectation is simply thatโs where heโd go. Heโs looking at these bombers and heโs looking at a team that from the get-go will be built around him and heโs going to be where he wants to be and heโs going to be the centerpiece as much as Toronto has catered to him, itโs a little bit, again, itโs like the uniqueness of LeBron going to Dwyane Wade and joining Dwyane Wade in Miami. It was Dwyane Wadeโs team and LeBron, on some level, was okay with that, Dwyane was willing to say, โLeBron, I want it to be your team. Kyle Lowry, from everything that Iโve heard, not excited that the Toronto Raptors are catering to Kawhi Leonard to the levels that they are. Now, I donโt know whether theyโve gotten past that, but I know at one point, it was that that was a little bit of a sticking point and that relationship between Kawhi and Kyle, I havenโt been around them in person for a while, so I canโt honestly tell you where their relationship is if itโs evolved, but you know, the friendship between Wade and LeBron had a huge influence, just like the friendship that evolved, and maybe this is an indication that something could happen with Kyle and Kawhi developing an understanding, although they donโt strike me as being really the same kind of guys, but we saw Russ and Paul George, you know, guys from LA, guys that came to appreciate each other, guys that developed a friendship over last season, that ultimately made Paul George more than comfortable staying in Oklahoma City and continue to play with Russ,โ said Bucher.
He would Continue:
โThat relationship had as much to do with anything else in Paul Georgeโs decision. Could that happen with Kawhi and Kyle? It could, but you know, from what I know from early on, it didnโt start that way, and so I just think that Kawhiโs looking at this and saying, โI won a ring in San Antonio, I went through that, a little bit like KD with the Warriors, goes to Toronto and he gets to the NBA finals. Okay, but now what I really want to do is, I want to be at the heart of a team and I want to see it built and raised up around me. Thatโs what I want to do before my NBA career is thoughโ, heโs certainly got a better chance of doing that with the Clippers then he would in Toronto, even with the idea that if they get to the finals, you look around theyโve got young Pascal Siakam and you look at the various pieces that they have and what the Raptors have been willing to commit to making it happen, and you can say, โman, I could be LeBron for, like, that next five years. I can be in the NBA finals on a perennial basis.โ I think thatโs some of what has KD intrigued with New York. The bar to cross is not that high, and if anybody that sees themselves as LeBron-like looks at the Eastern Conference like, โman, he did it for seven, eight years in a row. Iโm in the right place at the right time, whoโs to say I couldnโt do the same thing in the Eastern Conference?โโ
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