Kawhi Leonard got what he wanted.
All he had to do first was win a championship for the entire country of Canada ahead of settling in on the dismantling of a team from Oklahoma City.
From there, Kawhi signed with the Los Angeles Clippers. Four years and $141 million to play for what looks like the best collection of talent in the NBA at the moment.
Thunder star Paul George will join Leonard as California-raised Clippers, George became a member of the organization on Friday night when the Clippers sent a 1980s-amount of first-round picks to OKC in exchange for the 29-year old MVP candidate.
The Clipper trust absolutely unloaded its cabinet in advance of what the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise needed in order to survive. OKC will receive Los Angeles’ first-round picks, with no protection or consideration, in 2022, 2024 and 2026.
The Clippers owned the rights to Miami’s unprotected first-round selection in 2021, this asset is the property of the Thunder now. Woj reports the Clippers will also send a protected (1-14, also via Miami) first-round selection to the Thunder in 2023, and Oklahoma City has the right to swap first-round draft slots with the Clippers in 2023 and 2025.
It doesn’t end there: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the widely-admired combo guard who turns 21 on Friday, will head from the Clippers to the Thunder. Danilo Gallinari, the 30-year old forward that managed 20 points per game in 30 minutes for LAC in 2018-19, is also off to OKC. His $22.6 million contract expires after the season.
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George should provide explosive with the Clippers. Pat Beverley is back as lead point guard for Doc Rivers’ charismatic crew, the group boasts productive, disparate center depth in the form of Ivica Zubac and Montrezl Harrell and shooting in the form of second-year stud Landry Shamet. Lou Williams still comes off this team’s bench, the pitch is set.
This is how you Los Angeles.
SAM PRESTI
Oklahoma City’s role in all this was unforeseen, maybe it shouldn’t have been.
The Thunder were set to become one of the NBA’s highest-paid teams in 2019-20 without even dotting a single new document, Muscalas don’t count, OKC owed so damn much. The Thunder were a first round failure in the last postseason, the ease and adaptability of the ongoing NBA summer no doubt rattled the Thunder’s best player.
It would be easy to feel sorry for Sam Presti’s Thunder were it not for the group’s role in safe-harboring Russ and his tilting instincts for too long: OKC had to know the connection between George and Westbrook would taste choleric in time. Westbrook turns 31 in November, this is who he was.
The haul astonishes: Shai’s a sensible star, Danilo’s a baller.
The picks, outrageous. The NBA thought it was out of its mind when the Nets sent a crippling array of assets to Boston for a swatch of aging stars in 2013, but it turns out we were paying attention to the wrong side of the problem.
The trick isn’t minding the draft picks, apparently, it’s settling on the stars. That’s at least what the Clippers and Lakers are gonna try and tell us, in a sweaty decade, when the Pelicans and Thunder still roll with rookie deals earned from excising an unhappy superstar ever-so-long ago.
And now the Thunder have an excuse to deal Russell Westbrook (two years, $78.75 million), and to take a step back after its own decade of playoff prominence.
The Thunder didn’t win a championship during this term but, remember: Oklahoma City had Russell Westbrook in its lineup nearly the entire time.
LAKERS
Kawhi Leonard would have had to work hard as a Laker, even if load management left him at 60 games. It was too daunting a setup. There wasn’t a team there, only two billboards and a whole lotta holes to fill.
Kawhi’s incumbent Raptors sometimes only filled seven seats in the box score during the postseason yet even Toronto appeared far heartier than the Lakers’ top-heavy alignment. The Clippers boasted depth from the outset that huddled ready in rank even after Shai and Gallinari were lost to Oklahoma City.
The Lakers did not recover, inking Danny Green to a woof of a two-year, $30 million deal and increasingly passable JaVale McGee to a two-year, $8.5 million contract. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is back, they’ll have LeBron understudy Quinn Cook, the “smaller signings” never really developed names and the Lakers wouldn’t-a signed ‘em anyway.
The Lakers had to do it, Los Angeles had to try and secure Kawhi yet in its end the Lakers were still outfoxed by a Clipper team that never tanked, by Doc Rivers and Lawrence Frank. A coupla coaches.
A team with LeBron James on it and an in-prime Anthony Davis will have to scramble, the Western Conference doesn’t schedule many days off and the Lakers will have everyone’s TNT-best ahead of them when it comes time to line up.
Davis’ departure from New Orleans looks sleazy by this summer’s comparative moves, LeBron offered no lure, other players still want to whoop that ass rather than sitting aside it on the podium.
James’ MVP season won’t be enough to distance the Lakers from the rest of the cast. This is not what was supposed to happen.
Ahahaha.
HALFTIME
Scottie Pippen skulking, Jaren Jackson Sr., Penny Hardaway, Stephon Marbury goes at Jason Williams, Rick Pitino’s Celtics and Rod Strickland with a reverse.
Vince Carter drops 27 in the Air Canada Centre’s debut, including two off a Charles Oakley lob.
I believe this particular Sunday’s SuperSonics/Lakers game was the impetus for the Chet Harper’s turn at ESPN just a few weeks later.
KAWHI LEONARD AND YOUR CLIPPERS
Doc’s team is the reason you had to wait so long. Derided for most of July as a trailing third in the two-way race for Kawhi, the Clippers instead vaulted over the frontrunners in using its trunk’s worth of preparedness to pull ahead in the pecking parade.
Suddenly Paul George is a Clipper and Kawhi Leonard in Toronto makes no sense, none, not with another Californian setting up shop in L.A.
The Clippers didn’t leak anything, the club retained Beverley and pulled Moe Harkless and yet that wasn’t the point. Leonard wanted to play for them, he was willing to delay his decision until the Clippers developed options, Kawhi even ran the lengths to encourage those options to make a little ruckus on their side of the phone.
While the rest of the world assumed Leonard to be within protracted arm’s length of his pen and paper, Kawhi worked the lines in search of a second superstar.
Paul George’s seeming unavailability proved no obstacle, there was enough juice here to keep us all fat and giggly and Leonard and the Clippers didn’t mind taking a shot.
It never hurts to ask, to wait and be patient, and ask again. In doing so, Kawhi Leonard changed how all this is played.
While getting exactly what he wanted.
TORONTO
Toronto’s cheeks still hurt from smiling, the Toronto Raptors won a championship last month.
The Toronto Raptors are the reigning NBA champions, because the Raptors won the NBA title in 2018-19.
Toronto shouldn’t feel satisfied with a single title, a single ring doesn’t befit a metropolis that is larger than most other NBA cities. The Raptors shouldn’t be keen to take its only trophy and meekly skulk back into irrelevance and thankfully they won’t, Masai Ujiri is around.
Yet the Raptors didn’t take Kawhi Leonard into the fold as an emerging team. The Raptors were on last legs and the rest of the league knew it.
Loftiest of all, Ujiri knew it. A game-closing, oft-unstoppable superstar was the only thing that was going to put Toronto into title contention. Leonard’s abilities came straight from central casting and there the Raptors were, in February, when Ujiri traded a 26-year old center for a 34-year old one.
The Raptors are an aging champion, and by the time Pascal Siakam sniffs Paul George’s blend of two-way dominance Kawhi Leonard will be in his 30s. Leonard turned 28 the day before Kevin Durant, never happy in his prime seasons, agreed with Brooklyn. The same day 28-year old Nikola Mirotic shocked the NBA by signing with Barcelona.
NBA players have seen too many of their brethren take the money and talk themselves into employment terms with diminishing appeal. It’s important to get these years right.
Sometimes it means walking away from the best year of your life.
RHYME THYME PEOPLE
Soul Train Saturday, and hot-damn that hook.
Three minutes and 24-seconds of stank-face.
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Kawhi Leonard tracks out of Toronto