Kawhi Leonard will be the first NBA Finals MVP ever, ever, to play for a different team the season after winning a championship.

Paul George, meanwhile, signed a four-year, $137 million contract last summer, as an unrestricted free agent, with the Oklahoma City Thunder. So it was his idea, and his alone, to sign there. Twelve months later, he wanted out.

Indeed, this is a “landmark moment” for the LA Clippers, who formally introduced Leonard and George at a news conference Wednesday. Team president Lawrence Frank called it that; owner Steve Ballmer said the Clippers, with these two on the team, adding to what was already built in L.A., are now in the business of competing for titles. Hard stop.

The Clippers did everything right, from negotiating flawlessly with Leonard to attract him as a free agent, to stockpiling the assets necessary to acquire someone like George in a trade. And then they pulled it off. A remarkable turning point in franchise and NBA history, involving two of the league’s best players who both happen to be from Los Angeles.

But there is another side to this story, one where two other franchises were wiped off the face of the Earth as far as title contention goes, and one of them, the Toronto Raptors, are literally defending champs.

Toronto’s title defense ended before it even began. Leonard was named Finals MVP June 13, the parade was June 17, and he was gone to the Clippers July 5.

The way all of this went down — Leonard leaving behind the team he made a champion; George asking to be traded by the team he just committed to long term; is unprecedented and a prime example of this new age of player empowerment in the NBA.

All Leonard and George really had to say about it Wednesday was “thank you” to the organizations left behind.

“I don’t have social media so I’m not able to put out a paragraph or whatever, but like I was going to say, just thank all of Toronto, the city, the country,” Leonard said. “It was a great, amazing season. Best parade ever. Thanks to the doctors for delivering my baby, my baby boy. He’s three months now, still healthy. I also want to thank the city as far as the restaurants, giving out at that ‘Kawhi and dine’ throughout the playoffs. Took advantage of that.

“The players, they already know what’s up. Text, FaceTime me, we’ll talk. Coaching staff as well. The whole organization, really, just thank the whole city, thank you.”

And George?

“I just want to thank the whole Thunder organization,” he said. “Mr. Bennett (Thunder chairman Clay Bennett), (general manager) Sam Presti, for the partnership that we had there. It was a great two years for me. But ultimately, they helped me find my way back home to LA and very appreciative of that moment. It’s pretty dope.”

In Toronto, fans (and the good marketing people at New Balance) made Leonard the King of the North. They gave out free food. They delivered his child!

On a serious note, the Raptors took a big gamble by trading for Leonard last summer, knowing he had a year left on his contract and preferred L.A. And of course it paid off. They are champions and that can never be taken from them. But they also made some organizational compromises to try to keep Leonard beyond last season.

They had made it a mantra in the locker room that players should make it a goal to be healthy and available to play all 82 games, and then let Leonard play in 60 for “load management.” They made changes to their travel routines and food options to suit Leonard. They gave Leonard’s family and friends special access and created a position on the coaching staff to hire Jeremy Castleberry, Leonard’s close friend.

Leonard, of course, returned the favor. He hit the most iconic shot in franchise history, saving them in Game 7 of a conference semifinal against Philadelphia, and played hurt through the conference finals and Finals, leading the Raptors to the first NBA title won outside the United States.

In his public statements, Raptors president Masai Ujiri said, “We got a great deal out of this — we won a championship, so we’re happy.” He also said he was not “disappointed.”

Privately, of course, he’s upset. Most in the Raptors’ organization are, at least to some degree. This is not some shocking revelation, as they are, after all, human. Several sources confirmed this to The Athletic (the hurt feelings part). While they never felt misled, they did believe Leonard used them as leverage in free agency.

There will be no public airing of sour grapes — that’s a no-no in the NBA since Cavs chairman Dan Gilbert went postal after LeBron left the first time, in 2010.

The Raptors will be gracious and appreciative in public, they want to be a destination for future free agents, after all, but they are looking at a rebuild more so than a title defense, and they barely got to celebrate. Many are still processing it all.

Again, nothing like this has happened before. Since 1969, the first year in which a Finals MVP was named, only one MVP did not open the following season with the defending champs. His name was Michael Jordan, and he retired following the Bulls’ 1998 title — their third consecutive championship. LeBron and Kevin Durant, the previous two Finals MVPs (over a period of three years), were free agents following their Finals wins and chose to return to defend titles.

Organizationally, the Raptors knew they’d need to make the case to Leonard to try to convince him to stay, and there were no guarantees. But they thought as they went deeper in the playoffs, their chances improved.

Leonard was the last marquee free agent to pick a team this summer, freezing three franchises (Clippers, Lakers and Raptors) until he chose.

“I was a free agent, so I could choose anywhere I wanted to go, for the most part,” Leonard said, when asked if his free agency was emblematic of players wielding power over teams in the modern NBA. “So I don’t really have too much to say on that.”

(Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)

George, meanwhile, was traded to the Thunder by the Indiana Pacers in the summer of 2017. Why? Because he made clear he would not re-sign with the Pacers as a free agent the following year, with an eye toward playing for the Lakers in L.A., where he grew up.

Last summer, the Lakers wanted George so much so that they were fined for tampering. They knew they were getting LeBron, they had the cap space for another star like George, and were waving their arms like a third-base coach steering a baserunner home. Because that’s what George wanted. Except, George did not even take a meeting with the Lakers. He was recruited heavily by the Thunder, and specifically by Russell Westbrook, to re-sign with the Thunder.

“Unfinished business,” George said on Instagram, confirming his decision, while he and Westbrook smoked cigars at Westbrook’s house party.

In the span of the next year, the Thunder lost in the first round of the playoffs again, this time to Portland. George and Westbrook were upset, but not with each other. In a way, though, George’s trade request did have something to do with Westbrook, sources said. He was concerned with a perceived “instability” on the roster, including worries that perhaps even Westbrook could be traded.

“I didn’t do nothing that was … I worked hand in hand with the front office,” George said of his trade request. “We had a great relationship. We played, I played two good years there and it was a mutual thing between both of us that the time was up. We both had ideas of doing things differently, so, I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with it.”

What George said is true in a sense. The Thunder didn’t fight him on his demand, and instead worked to move him to the city he apparently always wanted to land. But it was not Oklahoma City’s idea to trade him initially. After George was traded, the Thunder moved Westbrook to Houston, beginning a full rebuild of its own.

“The initial plan was to give it another year, see what we could do and I did that,” George told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, in a separate interview Wednesday. “We played another year and it felt like we were just stagnant. The next thing was, let’s go forward and move forward with other plans. And again, it was mutual amongst everybody.”

There were potential financial benefits to signing with the Thunder last summer over a team like the Lakers, if indeed George’s plan was to give it just one more year in Oklahoma City. But there would be nothing stopping the Thunder from trading him to, say, Cleveland or Memphis if either of those teams had been the one offering the best package.

So if George was really considering staying with the Thunder for only one season of his four-year deal, it was a huge risk. Hitting the eject button a year after inking such a big contract is a remarkable turn of events.

Really, all of this was.

(Top Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)