NBA Draft: 5 predictions for a potentially crazy night
By Ben Beecken
The San Antonio Spurs will not trade Kawhi Leonard
Kawhi Leonard has reportedly asked the San Antonio Spurs to trade him, preferably to Los Angeles. That has led to a flood of speculative trade pieces, such as this one from ESPN — to be expected when one of the best four or five players in the NBA hits the trading block.
If the reports are to be believed, Leonard could be introduced in the purple and gold (or, perhaps, the red, white and blue of the Clippers) sometime in the next week. But I’m here to speculate that it simply won’t happen. Or, at least not that quickly.
The Spurs aren’t exactly an organization that makes rash decisions. While they’ve surely known just how discontent Leonard has been for some time, the trade request seems to have been more recent, and I’m not sure that R.C. Buford and Gregg Popovich are going to be forced into something quicker than they’d like.
Moving a superstar of Leonard’s caliber is extremely complicated. The Lakers don’t have enough future picks and likely don’t have the young talent level to send back to the Spurs to make a trade work.
The Boston Celtics would seem to be an intriguing destination, and especially if the Celtics think that they’re going to be in a situation when Kyrie Irving may want to explore free agency in 12 months.
At any rate, it seems as though too much would have to come together quickly for a trade of this magnitude to go down on draft night.