Putting together an NBA roster is part science and part art. It’s also part luck, because there are so many variables at play that are not in the team’s control. NBA general managers need to have a Plan A, a Plan B, and a few other backups just in case their best-laid plans fail. That’s especially true when it comes to dealing with star players.
Advertisement
Well, as far as the stars are concerned, along with the teams, other players who are moved around with them are also left in the lurch. But then, more than any other team sport, stars matter in the NBA. They drive the conversation, they sell the shoes, and most importantly, it’s nearly impossible to win big without them.
The Toronto Raptors understood that better than most when they traded for Kawhi Leonard in the summer of 2018. The move wasn’t an easy one to make… It meant sending away longtime Raptor DeMar DeRozan. However, it paid off less than 11 months later when Toronto won its first NBA title.
Kawhi had already won a title in San Antonio, and he was the best two-way player in the league at that point. However, the Raptors knew that they only had him for one season. His contract was expiring, and it was an open secret that he wanted to go to L.A. to play for either the Lakers or the Clippers.
Since Kawhi was the biggest prize on the free agent market, the rest of the league came to a virtual standstill. Teams awaited his decision. That left other players in an uncertain flux, including Danny Green.
The small forward had come to Toronto with Kawhi, and his contract was also up. As much as he would have liked to stay, the decision was out of his hands.
“I would have liked to run it back,” Green said on the most recent episode of No Fouls Given. “[The Raptors] didn’t have the money. They were only going into the tax for one guy, and it wasn’t Danny Green.”
Though the Raptors tried keep Kawhi in Toronto, he ended up with the Clippers. Of course, the legitimacy of that move has been in question since Pablo Torre uncovered the Aspiration scandal. Still, it meant that the Raptors and Green both had to pivot. Once the Kawhi domino fell, so did the rest of the league.
“Everybody was waiting on Kawhi; once he made his decision, everybody knew where everybody else was going,” Green said. “So all the things were negotiated at that point. Everybody was just waiting for that to happen.”
When Kawhi spurned the Lakers to go to the Clippers, that opened the door for Green to put on the purple and gold, which he said was his first choice. “I would have been in Dallas,” he said if the Lakers had signed Kawhi. “It made sense for everybody to wait for Kawhi, ’cause then you could kind of see where the chips were going to go.”
The move ended up working out for Green. The Lakers raised their offer to match what the Mavericks had on the table. And, after Green took it, he went on to pull off his own personal back-to-back as he won the 2020 title alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Kawhi’s decision was a huge sliding doors moment, not just for himself and for Green, but for the entire NBA. Who knows what would have happened if he had stayed in Toronto or gone to the Lakers? But for Green at least, everything turned out great.
