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The Toronto Raptors will try.
It will not be easy – they have a steeper mountain to climb than Oklahoma City did with Paul George – but the Raptors are going to spend this season convincing Kawhi Leonard to stay in Toronto as a free agent next summer. Leonard says he keeps his mind open, but at the moment, few players in the league think the Raptors have a great chance. Toronto will try, he has already hired one of his good friends in the staff, and the franchise thinks that there are things to do, as the chairman of the Masai Ujiri team said about the ESPN Adrian podcast Wojnarowski.
"I think you want to be authentic, you want to be real. You know, that's who we are. We may not be the best at times, but we could be the best in many other places: the diversity, the city, the unique character of a place like Toronto, the fans, the atmosphere. I think these things are so unique, that it starts to appear everywhere. And then you have to put the basketball together. Maybe basketball was not part of it, but I know part of him thinks this team has a chance. With his teammates and see how hard these guys are working. We must show who we are. There is no fake sales job here – that's what it is.
Ujiri threw the dice to get Leonard, sending DeMar DeRozan's favorite of the fans, plus Jakob Poeltl and a first-round pick, to the Spurs for Leonard and Danny Green. However, there were not as many dice as some people think – Raptors' management studied the landscape of the Eastern Conference, and even with 59 wins last season and LeBron headed west, the window of Toronto was small because of Boston / Philly. There were legitimate questions about the extent to which a core team of DeRozan and Kyle Lowry could go. Leonard, he's in good health and goes back to the MVP level, can change that dynamic, putting the Raptors in the conversation. So, when he leaves, the reconstruction arrives.
Leonard would have looked good in the practice sessions – with Kobe Bryant and LeBron / Durant – something that Ujiri tackles in the podcast. But look good in the summer, structured training and preparation for the game are two different things. We'll see where Leonard is in this spectrum starting in a month, when the NBA season begins. Then we start to see what number Ujiri rolled with these dice.
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