They don’t talk about Kawhi among themselves, they say, and they don’t need to. The Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship, and Kawhi Leonard left, and that left them as the defending champions in abeyance, playing as a lesser version of themselves under the banner that holds all their names. Including, of course, his.
The Raptors play the Los Angeles Clippers Monday, where the debates over load management are burning in L.A. as if he hadn’t done the same thing in Toronto last season, and then limped his way to a championship. As if championships, where the history books are concerned, aren’t the whole damned point.