While no Kawhi Leonard trade appears imminent, reports on the star forward continue to surface. Already this week, we’ve heard that several suitors that have inquired on Leonard are reluctant to give up key young players, as the Spurs’ asking price for their two-time Defensive Player of the Year remains very high.
Here are a few more of the latest rumblings on Leonard:
- Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks discussed the Leonard situation at length in an ESPN podcast, with Wojnarowski suggesting that teams making offers for Kawhi don’t necessarily hear back from the Spurs, who simply put each offer up on their “board” for evaluation.
- Leonard’s lack of a traditional agent may complicate his situation, according to Wojnarowski, who notes that Kawhi is being represented by Mitch Frankel – primarily a football agent – and Leonard’s uncle Dennis Robinson. As Wojnarowski and Marks explain, a veteran NBA agent can often provide an effective back channel in trade talks as potential suitors assess how likely a player is to re-sign after being acquired. In Leonard’s case though, interested teams don’t really have a relationship with Kawhi’s camp and haven’t built a certain level of trust with Frankel and/or Robinson.
- While potential Leonard suitors will be wary of his health, the Sixers may be best positioned on that front, says Wojnarowski: “Philly’s unique because one of their primary team physicians was the doctor that Kawhi went to for a second opinion in New York. I think on the surface, people go, ‘How could that be?’ But it just is. So I think it’s very conceivable that Philly has more medical knowledge of Kawhi Leonard than the Spurs do because their doctors had more access to him.”
- Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports suggested this week that LeBron James‘ decision to sign with the Lakers may make Leonard more interested in joining the Clippers. However, Wojnarowski isn’t so sure that the idea of going head-to-head with LeBron in Los Angeles as a member of the city’s less iconic franchise would be all that appealing to Kawhi, who might feel dwarfed in that situation.
- The Spurs aren’t yet resigned to having passed a point of no return with Leonard, according to Jabari Young of The San Antonio Express-News (link via NBA.com), who says that as long as Kawhi hasn’t been traded, there’s still some hope from the Spurs’ side that the relationship can be repaired.
- More from Young on the situation (via RealGM.com): “Obviously [Leonard] is probably being kept in the loop as far as what the Spurs are trying to do trying to trade him, which he’s requested. They’re also sending signals like, ‘Listen, we still want to try to work this out, so if we get down to the wire and all of a sudden, Kawhi, you have a change of heart, let’s sit down. Let’s talk. Let’s try to work it out.'”
