Kawhi Leonard, Still a Spur at Heart
When Kawhi Leonard was traded to the Raptors, I felt it hard. It not only marked the end of an era—it raised some serious questions about how both Leonard and the Spurs actually worked. The perennial All-Star, who had previously shown little interest in anything other than his team winning games, turned out to have an ego after all, or at least a group of people around who could convince him to have one. The Spurs, specifically Gregg Popovich, mishandled the situation as well, not quite taking Leonard for granted but possibly assuming too much of him.
A few months later, I’m doing much better. We can debate for days whether Leonard wants to laugh but can’t, or is laughing in spite of his ultra-serious nature. Either way, that laugh made me realize that things don’t have to be so shattered. Leonard is going to get back to business as usual, because he can’t help it.
We still don’t really know why the situation in San Antonio spiraled out of control. The way Leonard has shown up in Toronto already, though, suggests that he’s perfectly eager to pick up where he left off and that, true to form, his impending free agency is scarcely on his radar. Sure, Leonard has to remind us he can play, and establish the Raptors as a threat to come out of the East. Mostly, though, Leonard is going be trying to resume the sameness that has marked his career up to this point—and which is, for all intents and purpose, his natural rhythm.
I’ve written about this before: For years, I loathed the Spurs. The early-aughts incarnation of the team played slow, frequently ugly ball best described as opportunistic, and at worse, cynical. The team evolved; the play got prettier, the pace faster, the will to win less perfunctory. I also changed and came to appreciate the Spurs’ expertise and consistency. They were the league’s great constant, and San Antonio’s penchant for waxing and waning made them feel more, not less, durable. Far from radical, they were the league’s bedrock—its, ahem, fundamentals—insofar as almost any team or player worth a damn, saw the value there no matter how much it contradicted their style or personality. The Spurs weren’t for everyone, except they were, insofar as everyone needed them to orient themselves, to find their own place.
"What makes Leonard’s fresh start in Toronto so fascinating is that we’ve never seen a Spur of this caliber, one so central to that mythos and so steeped in that franchise culture, go elsewhere. Will he spread the gospel? Or will he be forced to compromise?"
Kawhi Leonard was the boldest Spurs-y project yet: A dynamic wing who could easily take over games by himself—the quintessential modern NBA hotshot—but absolutely refused to acknowledge this about himself. At one point in 2017, Popovich started running plays for Leonard based on the way the pre-dynastic Bulls used Michael Jordan, and Leonard dutifully went to work, exploding or improvising the script as needed … because he was told to. That’s not to say that Leonard is servile. In the same way that we clung to the Spurs as an organizing principle, Leonard had absolute faith in, and submitted to, the ideal of an orderly universe where coming into harmony with rules and laws would produce an ideal state of equilibrium where things were predictable, familiar, and totally, absolutely correct.
What makes Leonard’s fresh start in Toronto so fascinating is that we’ve never seen a Spur of this caliber, one so central to that mythos and so steeped in that franchise culture, go elsewhere. Will he spread the gospel? Or will he be forced to compromise? Do the Raptors end up more like the Spurs—a scary prospect for an already very good team—or does Leonard further open up his game and maybe, in the process, expand his consciousness? The reality of the situation is likely to be some combination of the two. But while over the summer this dynamic might have been read as conflict or tension, after The Laugh we know that Leonard is on top of it and ready to, for the first time in his career, really own his situation. Instead of relying on his franchise to furnish meaning that aligns with his view of the world, he’s got to take control, define himself and find new ways to get into his peculiar form of rhythm that is no rhythm at all. And there’s every reason to believe that Leonard can pull this off without getting frustrated or confused because, after all, he’s still a Spur at heart, and Spurs don’t do frustration or confusion.
It’s unfortunate that, at least for the foreseeable future, DeMar DeRozan—whose breakup with a franchise and city he loved is a feel-bad story if there ever was one—will play in Leonard’s shadow. He’s a top-flight NBA player, maybe even a legit franchise player. He’s got a temperament and work ethic that make him a great fit for San Antonio. But he’s not Kawhi Leonard. Leonard isn’t just better. Like Duncan before him, he anchored the Spurs by so thoroughly embodying their philosophy. Leonard looked to the Spurs for direction; in a host of indirect ways, he was a leader who assumed the same role with his teammates.
Odds are that DeRozan will fit in just fine and become a model Spur. That’s very different from Leonard, who created that template for others and set an example for all other Spurs to follow. If there’s any lingering sadness around this trade, it’s in our knowing that, even if DeRozan gets a fair shake, he may forever come up lacking. And while no one will ever hold this against him, with him in Leonard’s the league will be that much less stable and the world will, for the time being, never quite make sense.
