Toronto Raptors did everything right with Kawhi Leonard

Heading into a free agency period full of question marks, the Toronto Raptors can take solace in the fact that they did everything right with Kawhi Leonard this season. Will it matter?

When the Toronto Raptors first traded for Kawhi Leonard back in July 2018, there were question marks about his health – and even his desire to play in Toronto – following a lost season with the San Antonio Spurs in the 2017-18 season.

How the Raptors would handle Leonard moving forward would be an interesting point of call throughout the season. Finding themselves in a precarious situation, Toronto would look to get all of the value out Leonard – assuming that he would leave in the summer- but would also look to shift themselves into pole position to tie Leonard down in the summer of 2019.

The approach taken by the Toronto Raptors was heavily scrutinized throughout the season. Leonard, led by the Raptors legendary Head of Sports Science, Alex McKechnie, was placed into a “load management” program that was designed to give him adequate time to recover from games in the appropriate way.

In the critic’s eyes, Leonard probably wasn’t dedicated to the team, leaving them to play without their star player on 22 separate occasions in the regular season. Admittedly, there were times where Leonard did look a step slower in the regular season than we had been accustomed to in recent years, but that may have been part of the plan.

The numbers counter against that notion, though. Leonard averaged a career-high 26.6 points, a career-high 7.3 rebounds, and 3.3 assists per game in the regular season. He was selected to the All-Star game for the third time and, to round it off, he was nominated to the All-NBA second team, sharing the forward duties with Kevin Durant.

Surely then, something worked. You don’t get selected to All-NBA honors on name and brand alone, although they do come into the thought process of voters.

Leonard’s load management program wasn’t just about building him back up to full health. It was about building trust between himself and the Toronto Raptors organization. An attribute that eluded the relationship between Leonard and the San Antonio Spurs organization in his final season with the team.

All the vitriol stemmed from the Spurs and Leonard’s camp having differing opinions on the severity of a quad injury sustained by Kawhi in 2017. Both camps had different timetables for his return, and from some aspects, it appeared that some members of the Spurs roster might not have been fully convinced with the rehabbing process that Leonard had undertaken.

The Raptors had to be better than that. They had to be smart with the approach they took, and that’s exactly what they were.

Nick Nurse gave Leonard the keys to the offense, especially during the playoffs. That’s where it would all matter the most. When on the court, Leonard was afforded all opportunities to showcase his talent. But he was never stretched beyond what he could do. Or more importantly, what he felt he could do.

That led to a postseason that’ll go down in the history books. Leonard averaged 30.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.7 steals per game in the playoffs, playing a career-high 39 minutes a night.

The team leaned on him in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers and he had a career-high 39 field-goal attempts in Game 7. The final shot of the night from Leonard turned out to be the final shot of the series, culminating in one of the greatest moments in all of sport.

They had his back when he needed it the most, with Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, and Pascal Siakam all coming to the rescue at some point during the NBA Finals. On and off the court, the trust had been built.

Everyone shared the same ambition. They wanted to win a title, just like every single player in the NBA. But not just the players, the fans want success too. And the fans treated Leonard like a God from the moment he walked onto the court donning a Raptors jersey.

The gameplan for this season was simple, play for the present and plan for the future.

The Toronto Raptors did everything right with Kawhi Leonard in the 2018-19 season. In turn, he did right by them, he gave the Raptors their first ever NBA Championship. The gameplan for this season was simple, play for the present and plan for the future.

In that case, the job is only half done.