Leonard is reportedly seeking a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers although multiple teams have made offers for him. “You would be a bit foolish to say this isn’t a different feeling,” Mills told Fairfax Media as he prepared to lead a Basketball New South Wales and Under Armour high-performance camp in Sydney on Friday. “You have your main franchise guys who have handled this situation differently. With social media and media they can blow things up, even to know these rumours are out there is a different feeling. “But at the end of the day what is being said behind closed doors is a different story. From a teammate point of view you just carry on and see how it unfolds. “As a teammate of Kawhi and the relationship that we have developed over the last few years – we won a championship with him, my locker is next to his and that relationship will never change.

“His little one as well as his partner – he is a great guy and I’ve loved being his teammate and being on the court with him. Off the court we have shared a lot of good laughs. “This is different and it’s not the first time I have seen something like this, but it’s like a realisation that it’s a business, there is a lot of money involved and these are the things that happen.” If Leonard is traded it will cause major changes to the Spurs roster with multiple young players likely to arrive in his place. There is also the prospect other Spurs veterans could be included to make the salaries match-up. But Mills isn’t taking his eye off the big picture as the Spurs are still finding a way to compete against current NBA powers Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets while also maintaining their values as a club. Although Mills, who has three years left on his Spurs contract, hasn’t lost his sense of humour when asked if the Spurs were in a tough spot in trying to compete with the Warriors who knocked them out of this year's play-offs.

“I’m sitting here at Under Armour in Sydney having a coffee so I’m pretty sweet,” Mills joked. “It is a tough spot but that’s what sport is all about. “You have the basketball season and then the season when the basketball is not going on, that’s when the people in the front office have their time. We will see what happens and who we go into the new season with. “We know who the head honchos are in the Golden State Warriors, and they have been in that spot for the past few years now. So you try to keep to your values, who you are as a team and an organisation and that’s the way we want to win. “We won’t change who the organisation is. Anything can happen and you are in a situation now where you see how things unfold, you are excited when everything is done and dusted and you can get back there for training camp.”