Not one sane person thought that it could happen and now that it actually has happened and is happening, the Kawhi Leonard trade is no less surreal than it was last June, when a trade involving a top five player heading to Toronto could have only been dreamed up in the mind of a Raptors fan entering a hypothetical into the NBA trade machine last April to help ward off the crushing despair that accompanied being swept out of the playoffs by the Cavaliers for a second consecutive season.

How would the Raptors actually land a marquee NBA player without completely mortgaging the future and/or without Drake tampering with the free agency process? What completely implausible and unexpected situation would have to occur (Zaza Pachulia and Uncle Dennis) for Kawhi Leonard to leave the juggernaut and dynasty of the Spurs after essentially being given the keys to their kingdom? How could the Raptors ever part with the most beloved player in the history of their franchise after leading them to once imaginable heights? How could you dispatch a player who displayed loyalty to Toronto in the fiercest way that any athlete ever has and then somehow level that with your fan base? These were all questions that, when posed closely together, answer themselves. They can’t and they won’t. But it happened and here we are.

The Raptors hold the second best record in the NBA at the time of writing this (28–11) and Kawhi Leonard is poised to set career highs in FGA, FGM, minutes, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, FTA, FTM and points per game. In short, Kawhi has returned from injury and is till very, very good at basketball and is delivering everything the Raptors could have hoped for and more. He’s quashed any doubts about his ability to return to his previous form and conditioning and, at the 35 game mark, is a legitimate MVP candidate.

The less talked about portion of the trade is that the Raptors gained a second starter in Danny Green who has started every game to date, is shooting 41% from three and is on pace to set career highs and in both makes and attempts. He also, like Kawhi, brings intangible qualities to the team every night and although there is no way to measure it, they are the stabilizing force in the starting five.

Short Term Spurs : B+

If I had to evaluate the trade three weeks ago I may have had the Spurs score closer to a C than a B, but they are riding a huge upswing right now and have seriously started to figure out how work with the pieces that they have. DeRozan, in a perhaps a subtler way than Toronto fans are used to, is building momentum towards one of his finest seasons yet. At the time of publishing, he is shooting 48% from the floor which is the highest mark since his rookie season and in large part this can be credited to being given the leeway to return to his personal style after last year being strong armed into a pass more shoot more three’s scenario last

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season in which he shot a stunning 288 times from behind the arc. This year he’s on pace for that to fall somewhere between 75–80. DeRozan’s overall scoring is flat on last season, but even at 23 per, that’s good enough to solidly land in the top 15 in the league. The surprising wrinkle of DeRozan’s season so far is that he is, in a very low key way, on pace for career highs in rebounds and assists. At 5.7 total boards per that’s 1.5 per higher than his career average and at over 6 assists per game that’s almost double his career average.

The other portion of the trade, and definitely the least heralded, was the Spurs acquisition of third year centre Jakob Poeltl. Although his role has been limited somewhat this season because there a less minutes available to him than there were in Toronto, he continues to develop and has the potential to ultimately fit very well in a San Antonio system that could really exploit his high basketball IQ and expand on an already fundamentally sound skill set. Poeltl brings many intangibles to the table and his ability to run the floor and be in the right place at the right time doesn’t show up on the score sheet.

Long Term Raptors : A if they make the Finals. B + if they don’t.

The Raptors trade for Kawhi and unceremonious dismissal of coach of the year Dwane Casey was really a bold move that can really only be fully understood if viewed from the perspective of Masai Ujiri. It was his way of saying that the goal of an NBA team is to win a championship and that’s all that ultimately matters. The Raptors improved in every conceivable way for five consecutive years but it had become quite clear that the group that accomplished that, had also plateaued. This, to date, has been Ujiri’s defining move because, in doings parting ways with Casey and DeRozan, he is accepting ultimate responsibility for the organization and it’s future successes and failures. He had inherited the team’s head coach and it’s marque player but with their departure all of the onus is now on him to put together a legitimate contender, and by all early indications, he has. Kawhi may leave after this year and Danny Green will also enter free agency at the end of the season but if the Raptors reach the NBA Finals it will all have been worth it. Even if they don’t, the organization took a a calculated risk that positioned them as well as they possibly could.

Long Term Spurs: A -

In return for Kawhi the Spurs got two years of DeMar DeRozan in his prime with a third year player option for 28 million that he will likely exercise given that at that point he will be entering his age 31 season. They also acquired former first rounder Jakob Poetl who many forget was the 9th overall pick in the 2016 draft. He’s under team control for one more year after this and at a very reasonable price tag of less than 7 million over two years. Thirdly, the Spurs have the Raptors first round pick in the 2019 draft. Although it’s protected, it’s a foregone conclusion that the pick will change hands this year and ultimately will the Spurs two first round picks that will land somewhere in the mid to late teens and somewhere in the late 20’s. The Spurs definitely win this deal in the long term. They were forced into trading Kawhi, which diminished their leverage and negotiate a deal, but out of the ashes of a terrible situation they have found a way to stay competitive, relevant and recalibrate towards the future even if it’s still somewhat undefined. The Spurs currently have four first round picks on their roster and, with potentially another two on their way this summer, are in the unique position of being able to win games while rebuilding.

X Factors

There are always things that come up over the course of a season that can never be planned for. The Spurs couldn’t have been expected to have had the foresight to prepare for the loss of their franchise player first due to an injury and then permanently due to a schism that developed in the organization between Kawhi, his uncle Dennis who was acting as his adviser and Spurs medical staff over how he was being rehabilitated. The same thing can happen in a positive way as well. The Raptors were attempting to tank in 2013 by unloading Rudy Gay on

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Sacramento in return for two expiring contracts and Greivis Vasquez. As everyone knows now, the trade had the opposite effect and kick started the best five year run in the teams history. Maybe Kawhi’s injury rears it’s head again or maybe he wins the MVP and takes the Raptors to the finals. Maybe the Spurs use DeMar as their centerpiece or maybe they begin to have an eye towards the 2021/22 season where the only contract currently on the books is Lonnie Walker at 4.4 million.

Best Case Scenarios

Obviously the best case scenario is that Kawhi stays healthy, they make the NBA Finals and both him and Danny Green resign next season and extend the Raptors window of contention.

For the Spurs the best case scenario is that they continue to shift the goal posts as the season progresses. With a record of 10–12 they ended the month of November looking discombobulated and that their ability to make the playoffs was in real jeopardy for the first time in two decades. It appeared as if they didn’t have the roster construction that would allow them to play the style of basketball that the organization is used to and allow Popovich to coach the way he wants to. However, as the calendar moved from the November to December all of that was erased and they started trending dramatically and perhaps surprisingly, upwards. The Spurs found a semblance of defense and despite shooting the least amount of three’s in the NBA, were obliterating teams with their offense throughout the month on their way to a 11–5 record in December with several signature wins along the way against the Nuggets, Sixers, Clippers,Blazers and Celtics.

Conclusions

Overall, trades can’t really be evaluated with any kind of finality until years later when they’ve had the chance to fully play out. When the Raptors traded Rudy Gay,one of the returns was Greivis Vasquez. Eventually he was traded to Milwaukee for a second round pick. That pick became Norman Powell who, in turn, made Terrence Ross expendable. The Raptors then traded Ross to Orlando and acquired Serge Ibaka. In a round about way, you could say that Vasquez turned into Ibaka and Powell. If you evaluated the trade at the time it really didn’t seem like much of a move, but five years later, with Vasquez only ever getting into 23 games with the Bucks, it seems like a stroke of genius and a very clear win for the Raptors. That’s the fun thing about looking at trades before they happen, after they happen and then again long after they happened. The grades are constantly shifting.