Kawhi Leonard Discussion: “I’m A Snake Clipper Guy.”

Credit to Kawhi for looking out for his friend. Lakers can hire him just as easy, and there’s more for him to do here in L.A. while Kawhi is playing games.

 

Meh... He was willing to walk away from his "close friend" while he was on the Spurs. They are not THAT close, apparently.

 

Has there been any footage or even reports of him playing ball again yet as to how he's looking?

 

Key is weather again I think. He played with KL in Riverside, San Diego and he's from Maryland, Upper Marlboro (mild winters, muggy hot summers), then he lived in San Antonio, dry and hot. Both them homies gonna freeze and talk and dream about LA. No worries, Toronto can start putting up artificial palm trees, won't change the winter. They are cash-strapped as far as cap and can't improve so their best bet is to dominate the east. C Bags won't let them do that maybe Philly too. If they manage to avoid the C Bags and Philly by the second round then they got a shot at the Eastern finals. But I think the road stops there. Raptors have a top 5 player now yeah but Derozan was a great scorer for them and in the east, Kawhi's 2-way ability won't be as important as in the west in grueling playoff series.

 

"Hey LABron, make sure you don't stand right next to him...we wouldn't want the internet going nuts."



Btw, there are 2 basketballs in this pic, can you find both of them?
(Don't look at KD, he ain't have balls of any kind).

 

did the guy in the middle eat gary payton?

what's omer asik's lil' bro doing there?

anyway, i'll take those two as the other starters if the three important dudes are lakers next year.

 

Kawhi + KD 2019 confirmed!!!

 

God those hands of his may be bigger than Okafor's? They're freakishly huge. Yeah ball number 2 is hiding under them. I started to come here when I saw his hands before I even saw your leading question.

 

Mitts!

 

Them Raptors sure flashing their team pride with them shirts even at a workout game, cept' for that one Raptor, what's his trip?

 

LOL at the size of his hands ...

 

I have to ask from a hypothetical standpoint.... what would we have to do to theoretically fit both Kawhi and KD into 2 other max contract slots next summer?

I know there’s reports the cap is supposed to jump up to $108 million next summer.

If we kept everyone who has a contract going into the 2019-2020 season, we would have $61 million on the books.... add just Kawhi at his max (32 mil) and we would be at $93 million, with about 15 mil in cap space left.

Does this mean if we were to somehow dump Deng and his 18.8 mil contract, while not taking any salary back.... we would have about 33.8mil (very close to another max contract for KD)?

 

OMG those HANDS

 

I guess you’d have to get rid of everyone practically. 40 mil, 33 mil, 33 mil puts you at 106 mil for three players. I don’t think I’d want to build a team that way

 

I understand we would have zero depth, but that big 3 and a bunch of solid vets that are willing to play for the exception/minimum might be favorites to win a championship the following year. Keep in mind if we are able to convince KD to come too, it significantly weakens Golden State.

I do understand getting both is unlikely, it's just a fun NBA 2K scenerio to think about.

 

That's what she said.

 

Our window to pull something like that (3rd FA max) off closed this summer. If San Antonio had done a trade for say Ingram and Zo for Kawhi and Durant declined his option then we could have made the money work as LBJ = 35.6 KD = 30 and we'd only pay 20.5 mil for Kawhi if he waived his contract trade kicker. Additionally we lose the salaries of Zo and Ingram (-13mil) so roughly 73 mil in added salary. Add Deng and it's 91. Leaves enough maybe to cover the rest of our signed youth or most. Maybe fit KCP or Rondo in there with the mid-level but everything else would be vet mins. So no Rondo either as KCP would probably get the mid-level since he's Rich Paul's guy and that's a big if on would he take it and does that then have bearing on LBJ? My guess is LBJ still comes but we might lose KCP. Rondo goes back to the birds. And then who even plays PG? Hart and Lebron probably and Caruso backup. Next summer we could off Deng's contract possibly with picks and then have the ability to add a few players back but the cards would have fall a certain way and San Antonio smartly wasn't going to help us.

The above scenario leaves us with a bad bench. Right now our bench option are nuts. We have a minutes problem as it is.

I'm personally alright with not giving up Ingram and Zo to make something like that above to work. We can get 15 years of ball out of them and we don't know their plateaus yet. As it stands we will likely get Kawhi to add to Lebron next season while having built up the core (imagine the experience they get with LBJ this season) and only minimal losses to the youth we drafted (Nance Jr and Clarkson which was necessary) leaving 4 youth, whose ceilings are not defined or limited at this point. We can now limit Zo's minutes this season and let him build up since this summer was somewhat lost. We have options everywhere except the backup 5 which is questionable. Honestly at the 2, it's possible even Hart could become an allstar for all we know and the value of a 2-way player like that. We can't add 3 max FA guys now. But we can get those 3rd or 4th max guys out of Ingram, Zo, Kuz and Hart just like GSW did. And if we end up with circa '04 Pistons type guys out of them rather than big-time stars, cool, I like our chances vs GSW with that team.