LOS ANGELES – The appeal is obvious. As the Toronto Raptors made their way out of the classic old gym where John Wooden used to walk the wood on the campus of UCLA, the sun was shining, the grass was green. The nearest cloud was a rumour.
Southern California is home for Kawhi Leonard – in the off-season anyway. He was born in Compton and later moved to Riverside County before starring just down the I-5 at San Diego State. The NBA has taken him elsewhere for work – first to San Antonio and now to Toronto, so a Saturday night off at home before playing LeBron James and the Lakers was understandably welcomed.
"[I’m] able to see some family, you know, talk to ’em, get some hugs, lovely hugs, get some good food," Leonard said after the Raptors practiced Saturday. "…I don’t know where I’m going. There’s a lot of restaurants out there."
There’s a lot of everything. It’s Los Angeles.
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That’s one of the reasons why LeBron James matriculated to Hollywood from Cleveland when he had the chance, signing a four-year, $154-million contract. He’s got an office on the Warner Brothers lot, two mansions in Brentwood and a long list of media productions in the pipeline, including a remake of Space Jam, starring himself.
There’s a long-term plan in place to contend for a championship or two in grand Laker tradition, and sooner rather than later given James is in his 16th season. But in the meantime, there is so much to do.
For James the on-court element of the move is proving more difficult than he might have anticipated.
Los Angeles is 4-5 after a hard-fought win in Portland on Saturday night, although things won’t get any easier on the second night of a back-to-back against the Raptors. James has preached patience from the start in L.A., and he’s started slowly before – his first year in Miami the Heat were 8-9; in his first year back in Cleveland they were 19-20 before going on a mid-season tear – but the scope of this challenge seems different.
As James ruled the East he had almost trademarked a style of play: put the ball in his hands, surround him with as many shooters as possible and let defences pick their poison. With the Lakers – or at least this version before the cavalry comes in free agency – the plan is to run and share the ball-handling and let the young talent around him grow ahead of schedule. They have more ball-handlers than shooters and more skill than experience. In some respects, it’s working – the Lakers lead the NBA in fast-break scoring and James is second in the league in transition offence.
In others? Los Angeles can’t shoot — they are 19th in three-pointer made – and they don’t defend – they are 21st in defensive rating so far. With Cleveland, James could lift some seriously flawed teams to the top of the conference in the East, but that’s easier said than done in the West.
“Um, not as fast as you guys think it’s going to happen,” James told reporters about how long it would take for the Lakers to find their legs after the Lakers lost their season opener to Portland, the one where his first moments were punctuated with a pair of spectacular tomahawk dunks and where his new team missed their first 15 three-point attempts. “I always kind of compare it to like instant oatmeal. It is not that fast. It takes a while to get to where you can close your eyes and know exactly where your guys are.”
Sounds good, but the Lakers early struggles haven’t stopped reports from surfacing that head coach Luke Walton is coaching for his job already.
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Toronto might seem like a long way from home for Leonard, but his first few weeks as a Raptor must also feel even further from any of the kind of tumult or scrutiny that seems to follow James everywhere he goes, L.A. being no exception. Toronto is undefeated (7-0) with Leonard in the lineup and 8-1 overall which is at least following the "winning games, this is how you get star-caliber players to want to come here and play" formula Leonard laid out before the season started.
The only blip to date was some concern when he left the floor in the final minutes of Friday’s comfortable win over the Phoenix Suns after rolling or jamming his left foot.
Leonard participated in practice but won’t know if he’s available until game time Sunday.
"I feel alright. It feels okay," he said. "I just jammed my ankle… but we’ll see tomorrow how it feels."
But the Lakers/LeBron drama may mean that Leonard can slip in and out of L.A. without much drama or scrutiny, which Toronto would have to count as a win.
Throughout his injury-plagued 2017-18 season and especially in the weeks and months culminating with his trade from San Antonio to Toronto, Los Angeles loomed like a magnet in the Leonard universe it seemed.
Though the words never came from Leonard’s mouth, there was always the assumption that if he wasn’t trying to force a trade to the Lakers or the Los Angeles Clippers this year, he will sign with one of the two franchises next summer.
You can rule out the Lakers as having any sentimental pull, for whatever that’s worth. Unlike seemingly everyone in SoCal, Leonard wasn’t a Lakers fan growing up.
"Naw, I wasn’t, I wasn’t at all," he said. "My family was but I wasn’t. I liked Allen Iverson, I was an AI fan, so I didn’t like the Lakers."
But would he want to join James in a superstar partnership? How about joining with another big name to use up the two max contract slots the Clippers are supposed to have available next summer?
Who knows?
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You can understand why Los Angeles seems so attractive. Even as the Lakers’ fortunes have waned Los Angeles has become the cultural hub of the NBA. Only 30 or so players get to play here year-round, but in the off-season, they flock here in droves with their every move feverishly followed on social media. James’ rise in Hollywood will likely only help.
"Everyone comes through here," said Raptors shooter C.J. Miles. "It’s good for basketball, it’s good for the culture. Obviously it’s good for the Internet.
"You know there’s going to be runs, the weather’s going to be good, the city’s nice. Young guys can have fun, family guys can have fun. It’s got everything you need in the summer time," said Miles "And I think it became that way because it was easier to convince guys to go to L.A. [to train]. When I was with Cleveland we’d come out here and play football on the beach, do conditioning on the beach. All the guys would get together, it’s fun."
As Leonard himself told the world on his first day as a Toronto Raptor, he’s a fun guy.
And any match-up featuring him and James are as fun as it gets for NBA fans. Leonard announced himself as a superstar-to-be when he matched up against James and the Miami Heat as they split a pair of NBA Finals with Leonard and the Spurs.
“Nobody expected him at this young age to play the way he has through the whole playoffs," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said of Leonard after the 2013 playoffs. "He’s just beginning to feel what he has.”
Those transitional moments for Leonard have very much led to where is now – on par with James or anyone else in the NBA.
"I just think us competing in the finals those years back to back, just being out there, you wanna play your best basketball at that time," he said Saturday. "You just learn a lot during those type of series, and you grow from it."
He’s grown to the point where Leonard will soon be able to choose his destiny, just like James has since he first left Cleveland for Miami.
For Leonard could that mean a return home to play with James, or set up shop with the Clippers to thwart James’ plans for NBA domination?
Or maybe a surprising detour through Toronto lasts longer than a year?
It’s all in front of him, like a day off in L.A. under a cloudless SoCal sky.
