NBA Season 17-18: General Thread

[Magnum_3_Ball]

Originally Posted by tap2390

No way in hell Kawhi gets traded... any tension between him and team is solely due to his injury and perhaps him being more cautious than the team wanting to be.

He's been in the playoffs every years he been in the league. He's been to the conference finals 4 out of 6 seasons. He's been to the Finals twice and was Finals MVP.

His team is 31 - 18 largely without him, tied with the T-Wolves for the 3/4 seed. Short of getting traded to the Warriors I simply don't see why he would want out.

I can think of a couple reasons.

1) How much longer Poppovich is going to coach is something I've heard questioned several times.

2) Most of his better teammates are aging i.e. Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili. Even Rudy Gay & Danny Green are entering the downhill side of their careers.

3) I heard it said recently (I think on this forum actually) that Kawhi Leonard is a lot like Dirk & isn't buddy buddy with a lot of NBA players. Meaning in this new AAU, recruit players to my team to make a super team NBA era, Kawhi isn't the type of personality to do that. He may see joining a super team as a necessity to competing during his prime years, so he may think he has a much better chance of leaving to join a super team rather than staying in SA & trying to recruit players to the Spurs.

Not to mention, we never hear about anything problematic with the Spurs. The mere fact this is out there, at the very least, suggests there could be a pretty serious rift between Leonard & the organization.