Kawhi Leonard shocked the basketball world earlier this month when he decided to join the Los Angeles Clippers. Leonard had just led the Toronto Raptors to an NBA championship and most assumed he would resign with the club in defense of his title. But instead of doing that–or opting to join forces with LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the Los Angeles Lakers–Kawhi decided to play for the other team in L.A.
While many have since wondered why Leonard would choose the Clippers over the Lakers, a report released today by Sam Amick and Jovan Buha of The Athletic sheds some light on that topic. According to the report, the idea of forming a Big Three with LeBron and A.D. simply did not appeal to Kawhi’s core values as a person and a player.
“On a fundamental level, the idea of forming a Big Three with James and Davis didn’t appeal to Leonard’s core sensibilities,” Amick and Buha wrote in The Athletic. “He forged his legacy taking down super teams — like the 2014 Miami Heat and the 2019 Golden State Warriors — rather than joining them.”
With Leonard instead opting to join forces with Paul George and the Clippers, he will help make Los Angeles the epicenter of NBA basketball next season. The LeBron-led Lakers and the Kawhi-led Clippers will be two teams in prime position to fight for an NBA championship. We may even see a Western Conference Finals series play out between two teams from the same city for the first time in the modern history of the NBA.
