When Kawhi Leonard started playing golf, he was fitted with specially lengthened clubs and extra, extra large grips so his catcher-mitt hands, which measure 9 3/4 inches from wrist to tip and 11 1/4 inches from thumb to pinky, wouldn’t swallow the handle.
The point being: There’s nothing standard, off-the-rack about him.
The other point being: It might not be good news for the Lakers.
Leonard was traded from San Antonio to Toronto on Wednesday, part of a blockbuster swap that also involved All-Star guard DeMar DeRozan, No. 9 overall pick Jakob Poeltl and a 2019 first-round pick heading south and Danny Green, a veteran guard who has won both NCAA and NBA titles, going north.
Leonard coerced the trade with his impending status as an unrestricted free agent after the 2018-19 season but he couldn’t coerce the destination, as much as his camp hinted that, you know, a return to Southern California would be nice.
Instead … Toronto?
It sounds like Siberia for a kid from Moreno Valley and San Diego State, the NBA’s lone franchise north of the border, a team named after a dinosaur, a city with an average high temperature of 31 degrees in January and average winter snowfall of 47.8 inches, a country with higher taxes.
So Leonard will zip up his parka, play an obligatory season with the Raptors, respectfully decline their offer for a long-term supermax contract and bid adieu to the Great White North next summer … just as the Lakers, who conspicuously have been signing free agents to one-year contracts, clear salary cap space for him to join LeBron James.
Right?
That’s the off-the-rack take.
Here’s what someone who knows Leonard as well as anybody told me privately: “He’s going to fall in love with Toronto — it’s going to happen. He’s not going to leave, I’m telling you.”
Raptors might become rapture.
For seven years, until things went sideways over the diagnosis (or misdiagnosis) of quadriceps tendinopathy that cost him all but nine games last season, San Antonio seemed like the perfect place for a quiet, unassuming guy who doesn’t covet money or fame or individual accolades, just titles. The coach, Gregg Popovich, is creative and innovative. The city, low key. The fan base, passionate. The locker room, chill — refreshingly devoid of egos bloated by making $20 million to put a round ball in a round hoop. And the team was a perennial title contender.
Toronto?
It has a young, creative, innovative coach in Nick Nurse; a fan base that is loyal and passionate but will leave you alone in public; a cosmopolitan city that many rank the best stop in the NBA; a locker room full of versatile, defensive-oriented players who don’t care about scoring averages; a progressive front office that, unlike many franchises, helps players secure local marketing deals; a loaded roster that won 59 games last season and no longer has to worry about its nemesis, LeBron, in the Eastern Conference playoffs; and Green, one of Leonard’s closest teammates from the Spurs.
The club president is Nigerian-born Masai Ujiri, the only non-American to be named NBA executive of the year. Leonard has called meeting Barack Obama during the Spurs’ visit to the White House following their 2014 championship “one of my greatest experiences.” Ujiri is tight with Obama and spent last week with him in Kenya opening a basketball court by Ujiri’s Giants of Africa charity.
Leonard likes listening to rapper Drake. Toronto is Drake’s hometown. He’s courtside for most games.
“We welcome you,” Drake wrote in an open letter to Leonard posted on social media, “to the most intense and supportive city in NBA basketball!!! You have always been a poised clinical warrior, and I can’t wait to see how Toronto inspires your fight.”
Or listen to Sharon Powell.
She’s the mother of Norman Powell, the Lincoln High alum who played at UCLA and was initially drafted by Milwaukee, only to be quickly dealt farther east to Toronto. A Southern California boy shipped to the Great White North.
He’s been there three seasons and last fall signed a four-year extension. Sharon, who lives in San Diego, likes it so much that she vows to attend every home game this season.
“The first time I went, it was freezing cold — cold like you just don’t know,” Sharon says. “But it was the best, it was amazing … Norman loves it there, he really does. He likes the city, the people, the team. The fans are so great, so supportive. They’re humble, they’re nice, they’re cordial. I haven’t seen pushy people yet.
“It’s just a fabulous place. Everybody has treated us with open arms. I’m hoping when Kawhi gets there he’ll feel the same way. I know he’ll be treated the same way.”
It’s a message she will share with Kim Robertson, Leonard’s mother whom she has befriended through basketball circles.
Ujiri will be telling her, too. The future of his franchise might depend on it.
“There’s something about this city, about this place, this team, that a star player hasn’t figured out yet,” Ujiri told the Toronto Star last year. “There will be a first one … it’s going to happen, for sure. Maybe not in my time, maybe 20 years from now, maybe 10 years from now, maybe five years from now.
“But I’m telling you, somebody’s going to figure it out. We haven’t won big, but people can see that and say: ‘How cool is that there? What if I came there? Maybe I can make it cooler. Maybe I can build it bigger.’”
Leonard isn’t saying if it will be him. He isn’t saying much of anything, as usual. He was in Toronto on Friday to finalize trade details, and the team hosted a news conference. With Ujiri, not Leonard.
But to prove the 2014 NBA Finals MVP and two-time defensive player of the year was indeed in town and diffuse speculation that he might refuse to report, the Raptors tweeted a picture of Leonard, Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster.
Leonard is famously stoic in photos, to the point where teammates kid him about it. But look closely at the man standing between Ujiri and Webster, and you can see the corners of his mouth slightly upturned. You can see some teeth.
You can see — yes, there it is — the beginnings of a smile.
