The Spurs universally lauded as the best run franchise in Basketball for the last 20 year are finally starting to show some cracks in the armour, Tony Parker traded away, Lemarcus Aldridge demanding a trade last year and now there best player and franchise corner stone Kawhi Leonard doing the same and demanding out of Texas. This places the Spurs in a tough predicament, do they back themselves to talk him around and have the carrot of a super max deal to do so, do they cut their losses now and trade him before the season or do they wait to during next season to jettison him. Personally I think he has shown his cards, he has sat out the majority of last season, shown he has no time for coach Pop or the senior playing group anymore and made it very clear he wants out and to LA, so the question now becomes where do you trade for the most return.
It would be sensible that the Spurs don’t want to trade Leonard to West Coast rivals the Lakers and would prefer to send him to a team in the East however when looking at it the Lakers may have the best package that the Spurs can get back apart from possibly Boston. The problem is that Boston may have the best package of assets to send to the Spurs for Leonard but will be very hesitant to do so as it could just end up being a year loan for when he leaves to LA in free agency and they end up losing good young players and draft picks for nothing, I think the Spurs may have to suck it up and make a deal with the Lakers.
The deal – The Spurs are going to ask for plenty of LA I think they will start with Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball and a draft pick, this is a deal which I don’t think LA takes, I think they will be happy to offload Ball and possibly Ingram but they won’t want to part with Kuzma who showed his a potential star in his rookie campaign. The Spurs will not like this deal but unfortunately they are starting to lose all the power as the longer this drags on the closer he gets to free agency next year and walking for nothing. If I was the Spurs I would make a deal with the Lakers sooner than later and get as much for the soon to be leaving superstar as possible.