​When the Los Angeles Lakers secured LeBron James in the summer of 2018, their plan was to pair him with one or two additional superstars. They hoped to lure Paul George in free agency, but he ultimately chose to stay with the Oklahoma City Thunder. That same offseason, the Lakers pursued a trade for Kawhi Leonard, who had just endured a perplexing and frustrating season with the San Antonio Spurs. Leonard had become the subject of a public dispute with the Spurs organization over an injury that limited him to nine games, and he was available on the market. San Antonio ultimately traded Leonard to the Toronto Raptors that July. Kirk Goldsberry, the former Spurs vice president of strategic research, appeared recently on The Bill Simmons Podcast and recounted that then-Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich refused to trade Leonard to the Lakers.
“As part of the front office that sent [Kawhi] to Toronto, it’s almost a full-circle moment,” Goldsberry said. “Don’t trade great players to your rivals. I remember the Lakers were calling us in 2018, ‘Can we get Kawhi Leonard from you?’ And Pop was like, ‘[expletive] no. We’re not trading our best player to the team we think is a real threat to our championship hopes over here.’ So we sent him to the Eastern Conference to Toronto for many reasons, but one of them was like we’re not here to help our rivals in Los Angeles.
“One of the things we knew back in 2018 was that he was gonna end up in Los Angeles a year or so later. He was gonna go to Southern California, so I’m actually kind of surprised given that the emotional reasons he wanted to be in Southern California, that now he’s back in Canada. Of all this stuff, it was like dude, I thought you wanted to live in L.A.? I thought that was the whole thing.”
The Lakers certainly had a longstanding rivalry with the Spurs throughout the 2000s, and this wasn’t the first time Popovich showed reluctance about the idea of Los Angeles landing a Hall of Famer via a trade. In 2008, when the Lakers acquired Pau Gasol in a deal with the Memphis Grizzlies, Popovich made his stance clear. “What they did in Memphis is beyond comprehension,” Popovich said. “There should be a trade committee that can scratch all trades that make no sense. I just wish I had been on a trade committee that oversees NBA trades. I’d like to elect myself to that committee. I would have voted no to the L.A. trade.”
Leonard spent one season in Toronto, delivering the franchise its first NBA championship. He then signed with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2019 as a free agent, at the same time the Clippers acquired George. Both Leonard and George are Southern California natives. Although the Clippers instantly became the team to beat for many national pundits in the 2019-20 season, the duo would reach the Western Conference finals only once—and would not advance past the first round in subsequent playoff runs, a fact that has been noted in discussions about their tenure together.