The fortune of the San Antonio Spurs forever changed on June 25, 1997. You remember what happened that night, right? The franchise held the number one draft pick, and they would pick the legendary Tim Duncan.
Fast forward two decades later and the fortune may have forever changed again. But nobody was really celebrating on the River Walk this time. July 18, 2018, the most head-scratching saga in franchise history came to an abrupt end with Kawhi Leonard being traded to the Toronto Raptors. That chapter in the marvelous history of Spurs basketball is now closed, and reading those pages who likely prove difficult. Neither side has ever given the full details of why the situation played out the way it did, nor will they ever.
So who won the trade? Depends on who you ask. You can't force that answer, or opinion, on anybody, but I would submit the following. When Kawhi is healthy, and that is one massive 'IF' at this point, but when at full speed, he's better, obviously, than Demar DeRozan. That's not to frustrate the Spurs fan base, that's just to tell the truth. Now, might coach Pop take Demar's game to a place that it's never been before? There's probably no doubt about that. But there will be no replacing number two, it's just not going to happen, and it didn't with this trade. We don't have to think too hard about the complete dominance that Kawhi showed on the court at times. It was ‘get him the basketball and everybody get out of the way.’ You didn't need a telestrator to break it down.
Some would say the Spurs will be better off without Kawhi. I'll give you that on some level. Championships are won by teams, not individual players. But the league is also about stars in the postseason, and Kawhi is not a star, he's a superstar. Demar Derozan is a star. Pairing him with Lamarcus Aldridge could work well, but does it beat Golden State in the West finals? Pure speculation here, but I think it was as much as about Kawhi wanting out of San Antonio as much as it was about the way an injury was handled.
I would have thought that Leonard would have been the next great Spur to have his jersey lifted to the rafters in the Alamo City. But this story proved that good things do come to an end. Kawhi, or maybe his group, wanted him out of South Texas. Demar Derozan made it thoroughly clear on social media that he was displeased with being boxed up and mailed out of Canada.
Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that this was not the trade the Leonard camp wanted. It'll be interesting to see if both players can find 'home is where the heart is' just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and north of the border in Canada.