The journey and the titles *both* matter.
It seems that any NBA fan would accept the end result of the Toronto Raptors’ one-season fling with Kawhi Leonard if it happened for their team.
A title in the bag, and that’s all he wrote. Kawhi is now on the LA Clippers, and he made his decision late enough in free agency that the Raptors didn’t have any real options to reload the team for a title defense.
(I mean, they’ve only added Stanley Johnson, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and Cameron Payne, the latter ‘good’ enough to be playing in Summer League at 25 years old.)
I’m not insinuating that Kawhi meant to do that; it just took time to make the Paul George deal work, that’s all. But given that it’s left the team as the lamest duck title defenders since the 2011-12 Dallas Mavericks, it’s pretty amazing that there hasn’t been much, if any, unhappiness with Kawhi.
And we all know why, right? Larry O’B.
If Masai Ujiri’s gamble didn’t end with the title, would Kawhi still be as beloved? Would losing in the second round to the Philadelphia 76ers in seven games have been enough? Or did they have to make it to the Finals? What was the minimum acceptable result?
We’ll never know for sure, but for the first time ever, we have a player leaving the defending champions on his own accord, and leaving them much poorer for it. And no one, not even Raptors fans, dislike him for doing so.
To be clear, I feel the same way. It’s just a little weird to me, is all.
I believe that this is us fans really internalizing everything the players keep saying in interviews (whether they all mean it or not). ‘Championship or bust’ is the general mindset these guys always espouse, and even though there are more than enough high-profile cases that prove otherwise (ahem, Carmelo Anthony), we still believe them.
Even to the extent of allowing our teams to be used as disposable vessels to get there.
Ask any fan, of any team or sport, what being a fan is about. It won’t be long before something along the lines of ‘sticking with them through thick and thin’ comes up. Thanks to the cyclical nature of sports, today’s world champion will inevitably become tomorrow’s basement dweller, sooner or later.
It’s a reflection on life itself. We have good times, we have bad times, and some of the best experiences are predicated on going through some tough periods. They go hand in hand.
It’s why we fall in love with flawed or limited players, and remember specific games during otherwise unsuccessful seasons. And all of these add up to an organic, (extremely) long-form narrative that makes us fans.
Because we can relate to that struggle for happiness, or that feeling of looking over one’s shoulder for the next catastrophe to come.
For Toronto fans, they have had all of that. The highs of Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady gave way to the lows of, um, Jason Kapono, before the Kyle Lowry-DeMar DeRozan teams flattered to deceive multiple years in a row.
And yet, Kawhi’s one and only season immediately trumped all of that. DeRozan, deified in the city around this time last year, has suddenly become that little bit less godlike.
Maybe both the journey, as a whole, *and* a title, are what matter. They go hand in hand. Maybe the players themselves are merely secondary details in the grand scheme of things, no matter how much we stan for individuals.
And maybe realizing that would reduce the hatred we dump on players requesting a trade or leaving in free agency, as long as they do it in good taste (ahem, Anthony Davis).
After all, they’re looking out for themselves. Same as the rest of us.
