He back | Owners not allowed to talk to Masai; he also stay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jjiKR-n49M
https://twitter.com/Raptors/status/1204551425856081920/video/1
Will Kawhi Leonard address the crowd before the game? Yes (-350) No (+225)
Kawhi Leonard’s return a shot at closure as Raptors try to move on – The Athletic
Basketball relationships are not personal relationships, of course. As much as the emo side of me would love to hijack us here with tangential metaphors and allusions to heartbreak, the similarities there are helpful only for prose. Sports operate differently. Obviously. And while that usually makes sport a welcome distraction or uplifting alongside more important, self-serious matters, it also makes the fan-player or organization-player relationship a little harder to navigate in the wake of a split. Someone leaving is not the end of that narrative or even that relationship. Fandom precludes escape or reprieve; Leonard and his Clippers are on the highlight shows regularly, sitting atop power rankings and in the discussion of title favorites. There were new fans created during the title run who may be able to go back to tuning out or divesting emotionally, but for most, Raptors fandom means some degree of NBA fandom, which means a fairly consistent reminder that Leonard chose elsewhere.
Most knew this was coming, or that it was a possibility, and again, maybe that’s insulation. In retrospect, you don’t ask “what are the chances Kawhi stays” once a week, try to read every tea leaf and constantly gauge the environment if you really think he’s staying. Even if you allowed your cautious optimism to nudge past 50 percent in the afterglow of the championship, it was bathed in caveats. The Raptors controlled everything they could and the spectre still loomed, creating an immediacy to the entire season that, quite honestly, probably made it all the more special, all parties involved acknowledging in unspoken looks and grasps of a friend’s arm at the bar and late-game rallies on the court that this was the opportunity.
Through that lens, the Raptors hold a unique place in league history with their title. The situation is doubly unique now, because no NBA Finals MVP had ever left, other than to retire (however temporarily); nobody had it that good and asked for something else instead. That presents some level of cauterization, the burn of Leonard walking away from a title team and the healing that comes from knowing he always just wanted to go home.
If this is all new for the NBA, it’s a borderline creation-level event for the Raptors. And it can be conflicting. The equity that was built up by the organization during Masai Ujiri’s tenure was supposed to help make stars want to play in Toronto, and it very well might as soon as they have meaningful cap space. Leonard still left, and even understanding his very valid reasons, there’s a complex that threatens to push its way through years of progress and to the forefront again because Leonard joins a list of others who wanted to leave. Unlike previous stars, though, Leonard did what was asked of him under terms that were implicitly agreed to. In the past, the fanbase has known only to respond with short-term acrimony and eventual begrudging appreciation. Winning softened those responses in recent years. Who cares what happened before if you’re thriving now? Leonard almost offers the inverse — there should be no acrimony but for the first time in a long time, the Raptors are a little worse off.
An Oral History of the Shot That Changed Toronto and Kawhi Leonard Forever – The Ringer
4. Reflection
In the wake of the shot, both franchises underwent significant changes. Leonard left the Raptors for the Clippers in free agency. Butler was shipped to Miami in a sign-and-trade with the Heat that brought Josh Richardson to Philadelphia. The Sixers also parted company with Redick and McConnell, while re-signing Tobias Harris and signing Al Horford as they continue to chase a championship. The attendant mood in Toronto, despite Leonard’s departure, was of a job well done, while Philadelphia was left to consider what went wrong.
Butler (to Yahoo’s Vince Goodwill in November): In order to win a championship, the stars have to align. Everything has to work out the right way: If you’re healthy, if you’re making shots. … So many things go into winning a championship, man. And to know you’re that close, it hurts. What if [Kawhi] would have missed that shot?
Gasol: It takes certainly some amount of luck. It takes a lot of work, more than luck. But certainly luck is always involved. Whatever you call luck, too. You have bad luck and you can also get good luck sometimes with shots like that.
Nurse: Oh, no, there’s a lot [of luck involved]. That [shot] is like one that everyone sees and talks about. But there’s so many huge plays throughout the guts of a lot of games. 63-60 in the middle of the third quarter and you really need a basket on the road and there’s a big long rebound. There’s dozens of them. That’s one of the things that when I went to [Las] Vegas [for summer league] some of the Miami guys said. They said, “Think about all those really huge buckets you needed.” I said, “No kidding, man.” There’s dozens of them.
VanVleet: I think about it with the new season starting when you guys gotta write your stories and predict who’s gonna do what. It’s like, “Yo, you have no idea. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know who’s gonna be where, what calls are gonna be made, what game-winner, what foul or injury, trades.” We had a completely different team after February. It’s a lot that goes into it. That’s what makes winning it so special. You have to do it for two months [in the playoffs], literally, two months. It takes a lot to get through it.
Zumoff: A good number of people on the internet flashed back to Vince Carter’s shot [against the Sixers in the 2001 playoffs]. You know, it’s like Toronto’s revenge.
Devlin: What a remarkable event. People talk about that game every single day. Wherever I go in Toronto or Canada, whenever I run into fans on the road, it’s one of those “Where were you?” moments. It’s something everyone is always going to remember. It’s iconic. It’s on T-shirts. It’s on posters. It’s in picture frames. It will be talked about forever.
Leonard: It was great. That’s something I never experienced before—Game 7, game-winning shot. So it was a blessing to be able to get to that point and make that shot and feel that moment. It’s something I can look back on in my career.
Undeniably, Leonard’s season produced a lot of unforgettable moments. Many of those moments were bordering on cinematic, none more so than Leonard’s four-bounce, series-winner that ended the Raptors’ seven-game, second-round playoff series with the Sixers. That was the moment that generated a thousand fan-reaction videos. And while most of them were likely fake, filmed after the result, the Leonard shot will always be one of the top where-were-you moments for Raptors fans.
Not only was the moment cinematic, but it was photogenic. There are at least two very famous shots from the moment. The first, pictured above came from before the basket, with Leonard assuming the crouching position, his tongue hanging outside the right side of his mouth, as he awaits the attempt’s fate (the sculptor might have to take Jordan “Random Guy In A Suit” Loyd into account). The second came after the basket, as he is mobbed by his teammates, his mouth open in celebration, his tongue blue by way of sports-drink staining. I would personally vote for the first option, since part of what made the moment so special is that it included a long moment of uncertainty that put everybody watching, in the building and at home, in the same power position — that is, nobody had any power. Also, it would be a lot simpler for the artist to render. Either would be fine, though.
In short, it was an iconic moment filled with several smaller ones. It immediately became the coolest, most memorable thing to happen in the 20-plus years of Scotiabank Arena. It is the only series-ending, buzzer-beater in a Game 7. And it is the only series-ending, buzzer-beater hit by a member of the NBA eventual champion.
It is, along with Michael Jordan’s “push off” in Utah, Ray Allen’s game-tying shot vs. San Antonio and a host of other contenders, one of the most memorable jumpers in NBA history.
Leonard’s time in Toronto? It is hard to contextualize. It’s messy and defies simplicity.
Leonard’s shot over Joel Embiid? It is a forever moment, one that deserves to be preserved for all to see.
The Shot: An oral history of Kawhi Leonard’s most iconic moment as a Toronto Raptor – TSN.ca
Jordan Loyd, former Toronto Raptors guard: “Kawhi’s shot is naturally flatter and so when he got there and he got it off, I was just in shock at that part. Then I was in shock at how high it was and how much time it had in the air. Once it hit the rim I think everybody kinda thought it was gonna roll off. Then it kept hitting the rim, kept hitting the rim.”
Serge Ibaka, Toronto Raptors forward: “I didn’t think it was going in. I was under the basket trying to go for the offensive rebound. The ball was bouncing and one time I was so close to going [for it]. Thank God I didn’t because it could have been goaltending. That would’ve been bad. I would’ve retired. If that had happened I would have retired.”
Gasol: “I was trying to crash [the glass]. At first, obviously, it looked a little short but you’re trying to read where the bounce might go and you try to get the rebound. But the ball went straight up and it took a crazy bounce, then it took another crazy bounce and then it just stopped for a second, at least it felt that way from where I was. And I think, like I said before, the energy from the crowd and from the whole city just made the ball go the other way and go in.”
Norman Powell, Toronto Raptors guard: “Honestly, I really didn’t know if it was going in or not. Just the way the ball hit the rim, I thought it was going to bounce up and bounce off but it hit the rim the right away, a couple soft touches and it went in. I remember being sideline next to Freddy and running straight to Kawhi.”
VanVleet: “I remember just kinda leaning. The way he shot it, I was almost behind him. We were all right there, grabbing each other, just kinda leaning, trying to guide it in. And then once it bounced [a couple times] we knew that it was dropping, so we were just waiting for it to go through the net.”
Ibaka: “I’m really glad the basket went in because we were too tired to go to overtime. I don’t think we would have really had a chance in overtime. I could see on Kawhi’s face he was so tired, his lips were dry, and everybody was so tired. Going into overtime would have been a different story.”
NBA Commentary: Kawhi Leonard and the Raptors helped each other exceed expectations – Raptors HQ
2. Development of the Young Players
Just as crucial as the acquisition of Kawhi Leonard was the meteoric rise of young players such as Norman Powell, Pascal Siakam, and Fred VanVleet. Prior to anyone in the basketball world being able to properly pronounce their names, they were part of the 2017-18 Bench Mob, which boasted the highest plus-minus of any second unit in the league. Much of it was due to their speed and defensive versatility and their ability to take the floor and completely turn the score upside down in the Raptor’s favour. At the time, DeRozan even admitted that the bench unit would regularly beat the starters in practices.
A year later, Powell had become one of the team’s most outstanding playoff performers, Siakam was chosen as the league’s Most Improved Player, and VanVleet received a Finals MVP vote for his defense on Steph Curry and his brilliant shot making at critical moments in the series. The story of VanVleet’s Game 6 performance and Siakam’s side-step floater to effectively ice the championship will be told to grandchildren. Plain and simple, the Toronto Raptors would not have won the title without the timely growth and development of these young players.
But as for Lowry’s point about the organization appreciating Leonard. Well, sure, Ujiri and his colleagues at MLSE are no doubt grateful for Leonard’s huge contribution to the banner and the impossible riches it brought. And there’s no profit in being anything but publicly gracious to the face of one of the NBA’s true game-changing talents. But let’s just say if the Raptors brain trust had to express its honest sentiment toward Leonard in the wake of their July negotiations, there’ve been moments when they’ve been more inclined to say “screw you” than “thank you.”
Leonard, don’t forget, ultimately used the Raptors as leverage in a league-shaking move that saw him land with the Clippers alongside Paul George, who was pried from Oklahoma City in a trade at Leonard’s behest. It’s a business, sure. And Leonard’s free-agent shell game produced his desired result. But that doesn’t change the fact that, according to sources, Leonard and his camp arrived at the boardroom table armed with demands that went beyond the maximum allowable salary, and that ultimately he landed with the team owned by Steve Ballmer, only the richest owner in North American pro sports. It certainly wasn’t a coincidence that, days after Leonard signed, NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged a perceived problem with the competitive balance of a league in which free-agency negotiations included talk of contract sweeteners that “don’t fall squarely within the collective bargaining agreement.”
STINSON: Boo if you must, but Kawhi’s influence on Raptors still strong | Toronto Sun
The events of the early Post-Kawhi Era in Toronto have also underscored the magic of last season’s group. This Raptors team fights and scratches and claws, with a defensive identity that was moulded in the fires of last spring.
But it has also struggled to match the best teams in the NBA, as was reasonably expected when a talent like Leonard was removed from the lineup. They will win a lot of games, and there is a lot of season left for coach Nick Nurse to find rotations and combinations that will work against top teams in a playoff series. But the NBA is still in the superteam era, and the free-agency madness of July left Toronto a level below the cluster of teams that sport multiple All-NBA players.
They had that, for a moment, and it was a historically good stretch of time for the Raptors franchise, with an absolute chasm between that and whatever group you want to pick as the second-best team in its history.
Before last June, the greatest teams the Raptors ever assembled were little more than a speed bump for LeBron James and whoever he had playing with him. And then all of a sudden the Raptors were down in a series in the second round of the playoffs, and some of their shooters had gone ice-cold — all very familiar things for the Raps around about May.
Leonard dragged them past the Sixers, demonstrating exactly what it was like to have a true superstar in a Raptors uniform at the right time of the year. By the time that Philadelphia series ended with the four bounces that you may remember, the Raptors were forever altered.
Players like Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet, invisible against the Sixers, ended up hitting huge shots in the title run. They are the leaders now, the fulcrum of whatever this group of Raptors will become down the road. And they are champions.
That is what Kawhi Leonard wrought in Toronto. It seems worth celebrating, but to those who feel otherwise, well, you do you.
Raptors built last season a mentality for winning without Kawhi Leonard – Los Angeles Times
Although the general rule — one of Clippers coach Doc Rivers’ favorites — is that each season brings a new team with no carry-over, that only applies to teams that don’t win. The ones that do? They bring that with them, Toronto center Marc Gasol said.
“Confidence. Experience. Any experience you get through anything, in sports or in life, you know, it makes you who you are as a person,” Gasol said. “And who you are as a person influences who you are as a player. I think every experience you get, good or bad, you carry on a lot of that.”
Although Toronto didn’t replace Leonard with another All-NBA player, the Raptors still have visions of contending thanks to returning players like guard Fred VanVleet, forward Pascal Siakam and veteran big man Serge Ibaka.
“I think it’s showed itself quite a bit in the early part of the season here,” Nurse said. “Again, I think winning those things, and I’m no expert, requires a lot of special players. I’ve been saying that a lot this year. The IQ, the intelligence of guys like Gasol, Lowry, VanVleet, the specialness of Siakam. Ibaka, when he gets playing, is an intimidating factor out there. There are some special guys out there. I think they’ve showed that in the early parts of the season.”
The numbers back that up, especially considering that Toronto has had to play without Lowry and Ibaka for long stretches because of injury.
The Raptors are in the middle of the playoff pack in the East, chasing the streaking Bucks. The most commonly used analytic to prove how good a team is — net rating — has the Raptors ranked behind the Bucks, Lakers, Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics.
The Raptors know that duplicating last season’s success without Leonard is going to be more difficult. They might be reminded of that when they see him get his championship ring Wednesday night in his first game in Toronto, the highlights that will play surely reminding them of the caliber of player they lost.
Tanenbaum on Raptors president Ujiri: ‘Masai is here to stay’ | Toronto Sun
When asked why a contract extension has not yet been offered, Tanenbaum said the timing wasn’t right.
“Masai has a contract that goes for another two years — this season and next season — so there’s really no need at this point (to re-sign him),” he said.
With Steve Mills apparently on his way out as the president of the Knicks, reports surfaced out of New York this week that the beleaguered team will make another attempt at luring the Raptors president. It’s not the first time the Knicks or another team has reportedly tried to steal away Ujiri. Following the Raptors’ championship-clinching win in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, it was reported the Washington Wizards were preparing to make a lucrative offer for Ujiri.
For Tanenbaum, the fevered interest comes with the territory.
“He is the best,” said Tanenbaum. “But no team can come to talk to him. That’s tampering. And every owner knows that. Masai is here to stay.”
Send me any Raptors related content I may have missed: rapsfan@raptorsrepublic.com
