The long-awaited Toronto Raptors preseason debut of Kawhi Leonard took place on Tuesday night and was pretty special, as the Dinos destroyed the New York Knicks 148-98. While Toronto didn’t face elite competition with the Knicks’ entire 2026 championship starting five out due to New York being on a back-to-back, the win was still encouraging. Leonard fit in flawlessly, providing the type of spacing the Raptors needed on the wing and doing exactly what fans remember him doing defensively from his 2019 run.
Even among the million positive takeaways from this game, I found a negative. While his numbers looked great with Leonard finishing with 21 points, five rebounds, two steals, and four threes in 17 minutes, he looked like a role player.
All game, something seemed off about the Klaw, and after going on NBA.com and looking at each of his shots individually, I was able to pinpoint it. Leonard only took three self-created shots, and the majority of his offense was him scoring off the catch or coming off of screens. Even though it was effective, I will say it’s not what I expected at all, and I am slightly concerned.
Leonard was on, but something was off
Again, the Raptors offense looked good. The ball was moving, a ton of activity from everyone off the ball, and a ton of perimeter shots were generated, which is great. But Leonard just averaged 27.9 points per game last season, finished in the top-10 in MVP voting, and carried LA to an unreal second-half turnaround with the ball primarily in his hands. I understand the supporting cast he has in Toronto means he doesn’t have to be relied on so heavily to drive the offense. But a big reason so many fans were excited to see the Raptors acquire Leonard was that this team needed a real No. 1 option, a killer-instinct scorer.
There are obvious counterpoints. First, this game was potentially about getting Leonard back into rhythm after he hadn’t played a full game since last April. Maybe Darko Rajakovic didn’t want to overwhelm him and just wanted to get him back into the swing of an NBA game rather than making him the focus of Toronto’s offense.
The second counterpoint is that maybe the competition level wasn’t high enough for Leonard to have to be heavily featured on the ball. The Knicks played several players on camp deals and a ton of players the casual basketball fan would have a hard time naming, so maybe that contributed to Leonard being primarily off the ball too.
But even then, I still would’ve liked to see Leonard have a couple more possessions where he looked like more than an elite off-ball three-and-D wing. One or two of those vintage Kawhi Leonard-size-ups where he breaks down the defender and sinks a jumper would have changed my perspective on the role he played in game one.
His role in this game also made me think back to something that Leonard said during the episode of Raptors Open Gym that documented his return to Toronto. In that episode, Leonard said something along the lines of this being Scottie Barnes’ team, and he fit in and helped wherever he could. Initially, I didn’t take that in a literal sense, but now I’m overthinking it like I just dropped off a Hinge date.
Maybe all of this is overthinking and unnecessary on my part, because that’s just my nature. Similar to a Hinge date, I’ll have to wait for the next game to see if my initial read was right.
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