The trade is finally official, and Kawhi Leonard has joined the Raptors, creating a dark-horse Eastern Conference contender north of the border. It’s not an ideal situation for other East contenders like the Celtics to have a new threat in the conference, but according to Shams Charania of ESPN, things could have been even scarier.
He reported that the Detroit Pistons attempted to trade for Leonard and were willing to offer him an extension, just like Toronto, but Kawhi made it clear that he only wanted to go to the Raptors, sealing his fate.
And for the Celtics, that’s probably a good thing. Yes, the Raptors have a solid roster and a young star in Scottie Barnes, but Detroit would have been on another level. The Pistons are coming off a season in which they won 60 games, finished in first place in the East, and saw Cade Cunningham ascend to a top-5 MVP finish.
The only thing that team was really missing was an ace scoring wing, veteran leadership, playoff experience, and another reliable option in the clutch. Kawhi would have been a dream candidate to fill that role, forming a lethal 1-2 offensive punch along with Cunningham and arguably the best perimeter defensive duo with Ausar Thompson.
Pistons with Kawhi Leonard would have been a juggernaut
With a few moves around the margins, that team would have checked just about every box and potentially vaulted to the top of the list of favorites in a loaded East.
But instead, thankfully, Kawhi didn’t want to go to Detroit, and the Pistons are facing relative turmoil. They’ve already lost Tobias Harris and Isaiah Stewart; they’ve got a nightmarish restricted free-agent saga playing out with their 22-year-old All-NBA center, Jalen Duren, and they still don’t have a clear number-two running mate for Cade on offense.
I certainly can’t say that acquiring Leonard would have solved the Duren problem, or which players would have been sent to the Clippers to make the trade work, but it’s safe to say the team would be awfully deadly in that scenario, and the addition of Leonard would have solved a lot of their problems with one fell swoop.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, and in the age of player empowerment, Kawhi had the final say on his destination, choosing to return to the team he fled to join the Clippers in the first place. We’ll see how things play out, and it’s not crazy to say that Leonard could end up hanging another banner in Toronto. But on the surface, it sure seems like the Celtics and the rest of the Eastern Conference dodged a bullet with his lack of interest in playing for Detroit.
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