Seven year anniversary of Raptors Kawhi Leonard trade weird with Masai Ujiri gone

National Post

2 days ago

Seven years after the biggest trade in Toronto Raptors history, Kawhi Leonard is long gone, but not forgotten, and now that's the case for the man who led the team at the time too.
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And it feels a bit strange. Masai Ujiri's recent dismissal makes this the oddest anniversary of the blockbuster, ballsy move, which changed everything for the franchise.
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On July 18, 2018, the San Antonio Spurs abandoned what they had believed would be the transition from a glorious Tim Duncan-led era, to one propelled by Kawhi Leonard. Leonard had grown disenchanted by the Spurs over the handling of a serious injury, but was eyeing a return home to Los Angeles. The Spurs preferred to send him somewhere else and Ujiri's right-hand man Bobby Webster (now the boss of the Raptors while a search for a new president continues) went way back with Spurs counterpart Brian Wright, helping talks progress to an eventual deal.
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Leonard and long-time teammate Danny Green, plus $5 million U.S. in cash would go to Toronto for iconic Raptor DeMar DeRozan, young centre Jakob Poeltl and a protected 2019 first-round pick which became a decent pro in Keldon Johnson.
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It was a shocking transaction, much like its rivals for the biggest trades in Toronto sporting history like Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter for Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff, the Vince Carter giveaway to New Jersey, the Doug Gilmour from Calgary heist or Wendel Clark for Mats Sundin.
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The Raptors had just won a franchise-record 59 games and earned top seed in the conference for the first time, DeRozan was as popular an athlete as anyone in Toronto and tops in many categories in the Raptors' record book. Even though a sweep at the hands of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in Round 2 of the playoffs had been devastating and led to Nick Nurse replacing Dwane Casey as head coach, Nurse had been talking to media just days before the trade in Las Vegas about plans to get DeRozan to defend and all indications were the roster would be kept mostly intact.
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'He's totally down, he's got the ability physically (to defend), he knows what he's doing. We've got to make a plan and a long-term plan and stick with it a little bit,' Nurse had told Postmedia about DeRozan about a week before the trade.
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DeRozan had famously received some assurance from Ujiri that nothing was cooking and was left blind-sided, hurt and shocked. Parts of the fanbase are still angry about the decision, despite the results and even DeRozan had said they could have won with him too with James leaving the conference.
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'When you get a chance to get a top-five player — which isn't very often — I think you have to jump on it. I think we've given a chance to his team, we tried to build it up as much as we can but, at this point, we got to this level, this opportunity came in front of us and we had to jump on it,' Ujiri said at a media conference post-deal.
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'I understand DeMar. He was unbelievably loyal to us. I've never seen anything like this … He has no fault, (but) our team is just not at that level. We keep pounding on the same thing over and over again. I think if we look at ourselves honestly … we have to do something different.'