Getty Toronto Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard
Toronto Raptors All Star Kawhi Leonard will join the Los Angeles Lakers, according to popular Twitter rumor page, Igotsources.
According to the account: it is already a done deal.
Go ahead & Pre Order/Customize your Kawhi Leonard, Lakers Jersey he’s definitely headed to The Lakers he recently tweeted.
In a pinned tweet from March: igotsources tweeted: Kawhi Leonard is the only target. His camp is hush hush but it’s always been the Lakers. Pending a change of heart which is very unlikely at this point, Kawhi is Lakers Bound.
No other networks or publications have corroborated this report.
Igotsources has also indicated that the Los Angeles Lakers have offered Monty Williams the position of head coach.
According to the account: If Williams agrees he will become The Lakers 27th Head Coach in the team’s history.
No other networks or publications have corroborated this report.
The Lakers have met with Jason Kidd, Tyronn Lue, and Monty Williams so far. By multiple reports, those names are the most likely candidates for the coaching job.
Lue is a former NBA Champion as a head coach, and has had two interviews with the Lakers. Due to his familiarity with LeBron James, some might think that he is the favorite.
However, one of the most-sought-after head coaches is Monty Williams. Williams is currently an assistant with the Philadelphia 76ers and has head coaching experience of his own.
Per Bill Oram: the Lakers are sending a lot of their brass to meet with Monty Williams in Philadelphia.
As I reported last week via Basketball Society Online:
By all accounts, Monty Williams is a leading candidate. He is from the DMV-area, as is Durant and he used to coach Anthony Davis when he was the head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans.
Ty Lue is believed to be up there because of ties to LeBron James.
Jason Kidd was higher on the list during the NBA season. Magic Johnson was also calling the shots back then, as well.
The Los Angeles Lakers have a lot to figure out between now, the NBA Draft and the NBA’s free agency period this July.
Golden State Warriors All Star, Kevin Durant is still a very high priority for the Los Angeles Lakers this summer.
The Lakers purposely filled their roster with one-year contracts to maintain their salary cap flexibility for the summer of 2019 where several NBA superstars like Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Klay Thompson, Jimmy Butler, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, DeMarcus Cousins, and DeAndre Jordan are expected to become unrestricted free agents.
As for Kawhi Leonard: the Toronto Raptors All Star is one of the many free agents available during the NBA offseason, this summer.
In a recent chat on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, NBA Insider Ric Bucher did state that he could see Kawhi Leonard leaving the Toronto Raptors even if they win this year’s NBA Finals.
Check out the excerpt of our chat on Leonard from the Scoop B Radio Podcast below:
Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson: Scoop B Radio on the line with Ric Bucher, NBA insider, writer at Bleacher Report, senior writer at Bleacher Report, talking all things NBA. We talked about Kawhi Leonard, the guy with the laugh that everybody uses in memes now. The Toronto Raptors, as you said, have been consistent. Do you see a scenario, first and foremost, if the Toronto Raptors were to make the NBA Finals, they’d be the first non-U.S. tea to appear in the NBA Finals, Canada is our neighbor in North America, but let’s say, hypothetically, the Raptors win the NBA Finals. Do you see a situation where he’d still leave?
Ric Bucher: Yes. Yes. Now, I think certainly, simply because it depends on where he’s going and what they’re offering. If he’s looking at the Clippers, and I would think that, I mean if he leaves, my expectation is simply that’s where he’d go. He’s looking at these bombers and he’s looking at a team that from the get go will be built around him and he’s going to be where he wants to be and he’s going to be the centerpiece as much as Toronto has catered to him, it’s a little bit, again, it’s like the uniqueness of LeBron going to Dwyane Wade and joining Dwyane Wade in Miami. It was Dwyane Wade’s team and LeBron, on some level, was okay with that, Dwyane was willing to say, ‘LeBron, I want it to be your team. Kyle Lowry, from everything that I’ve heard, not excited that the Toronto Raptors are catering to Kawhi Leonard to the levels that they are. Now, I don’t know whether they’ve gotten past that, but I know at one point, it was that that was a little bit of a sticking point and that relationship between Kawhi and Kyle, I haven’t been around them in person for a while, so I can’t honestly tell you where their relationship is if it’s evolved, but you know, the friendship between Wade and LeBron had a huge influence, just like the friendship that evolved, and maybe this is an indication that something could happen with Kyle and Kawhi developing an understanding, although they don’t strike me as being really the same kind of guys, but we saw Russ and Paul George, you know, guys from LA, guys that came to appreciate each other, guys that developed a friendship over last season, that ultimately made Paul George more than comfortable staying in Oklahoma City and continue to play with Russ. That relationship had as much to do with anything else in Paul George’s decision. Could that happen with Kawhi and Kyle? It could, but you know, from what I know from early on, it didn’t start that way, and so I just think that Kawhi’s looking at this and saying, ‘I won a ring in San Antonio, I went through that, a little bit like KD with the Warriors, goes to Toronto and he gets to the NBA finals. Okay, but now what I really want to do is, I want to be at the heart of a team and I want to see it built and raised up around me. That’s what I want to do before my NBA career is though’, he’s certainly got a better chance of doing that with the Clippers then he would in Toronto, even with the idea that if they get to the finals, you look around they’ve got young Pascal Siakam and you look at the various pieces that they have and what the Raptors have been willing to commit to make it happen, and you can say, ‘man, I could be LeBron for, like, that next five years. I can be in the NBA finals on a perennial basis.’ I think that’s some of what has KD intrigued with New York. The bar to cross is not that high, and if anybody that sees themselves as LeBron-like looks at the Eastern Conference like, ‘man, he did it for seven, eight years in a row. I’m in the right place at the right time, who’s to say I couldn’t do the same thing in the Eastern Conference?’