Getty Kawhi Leonard of the Toronto Raptors, who one analyst said gives the Raptors the best chance to beat the Warriors
Could Kawhi Leonard actually remain with the Toronto Raptors?
One sports betting odds site believes so.
According to Bookmaker.eu,the Raptors are a -180 (5/9) favorite followed by the Los Angeles Clippers: +180 (9/5), New York Knicks:+960 (48/5) and Los Angeles Lakers: +5400 (54/1).
Toronto Raptors’ Kawhi Leonard could join these team:
Latest odds via t.co/A8XuoOZNuT
Toronto Raptors -180 (5/9)
LA Clippers +180 (9/5)
New York Knicks +960 (48/5)
LA Lakers +5400 (54/1)
Leonard 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.
“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 told me.
“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.”
The Westbrook/George relationship makes sense to Bucher for a huge reason.
GettyRussell Westbrook #0 and Paul George #13 of the Oklahoma City Thunder
“That relationship had as much to do with anything else in Paul George’s decision,” he said.
“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?”