Article content continued

Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images

You know the rest. The Clippers pulled off the deal, probably finding to their surprise that the Thunder were willing to deal a superstar who was just a quarter of the way into his contract. (While the post-trade analysis has understandably focused on the massive nine-asset haul that Oklahoma City extracted for George, Thunder fans can rightly wonder what the purpose of the basketball enterprise is at this point. The team paid a big price to get George, convinced him to stay, and has now pivoted to tank mode as soon as he asked out.)

What if George had told Leonard that he didn’t want to bail so quickly on the team that he had chosen? What if the Thunder had told George and the Clippers to get stuffed? It’s not like there isn’t recent precedent for a team refusing a star’s wishes: Leonard tried to get himself traded to the Lakers in 2018 and San Antonio wanted no part of that.

The point here is that, given the evident mutual interest between Leonard and the Clippers, it took a bunch of unpredictable things happening, and a ton of luck, for it to ultimately work out the way he wanted.

Photo by Moe Doiron/Reuters

For the Toronto Raptors and their fans, that’s the part that stings the most. Maybe Leonard would have simply walked on to the Lakers if the Clippers had not been able to get George, but he clearly had reservations about signing up to be a performer in the LeBron James carnival. Had either George or the Thunder balked at Leonard’s entreaties, would he have come to accept that the safest bet for his career was to pursue more titles in Toronto?