Wednesday’s blockbuster trade with the Toronto Raptors confirmed two San Antonio Spurs realities: neither their relationship with Kawhi Leonard nor the organization’s constitutional drive to win were connected to a reset button.
The Leonard saga had worn on everyone, first behind closed doors and then out in the open, through the most taxing 47-win season possible, then hovering over a brief postseason, uneventful draft night, and the majority of free agency. By the end, the 27-year-old’s trademark silence was deafening, which lent an exhaustingly metajournalistic tenor to every leaked report, demanding we scrutinize each news story for its hidden intent and the presumed backchannel through which it was released.