Kawhi Leonard raised eyebrows when he joined the Los Angeles Clippers in the summer of 2019, fresh from helping the Toronto Raptors win their first NBA championship in franchise history.
Speaking on the Hello and Welcome podcast, former Toronto Raptors center Serge Ibaka detailed his initial reaction to the bombshell news about his former teammate back then.
“I didn’t actually try to recruit him because I didn’t believe it. I thought he was going to stay. Yeah, he won. I didn’t believe he was gonna leave, you know? I was like — I didn’t think he was going to leave, actually. We just won the championship. We had a great team. He could take as many off-games as he wanted — the team was still going to win without him,” Ibaka said.
“So he got a lot of pressure, you know? Whenever we needed him in a game, he’d be there. And if he had an off-night, he had guys to help him. So I didn’t really think like, ‘Ah, Kawhi is going to leave.’ I was calm. I was relaxed. I was like, ‘We just won. Who does that?'” he added.
Toronto Raptors determined to end their rebuilding phase, per insider
The Toronto Raptors haven’t been the same since Kawhi Leonard left in the summer of 2019. Since then, the team has only qualified for the playoffs twice, and their front office, under the leadership of newly installed permanent head of basketball operations Bobby Webster, plans to end their drought.
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“Someone I consult with who is involved in (executive) search firm stuff was taken aback by the fact that was even put out publicly,” Fischer said on the Insider Notebook. “He was taking it — and the league was taking it — as a foregone conclusion that Bobby Webster would be running the show.”
“The Raptors have definitely been given some type of formal pressure, some type of direction from their new leadership of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment to end this sort of rebuild era they’ve been in,” he added.
