{"id":33884,"date":"2025-05-15T03:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T03:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/33884\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T03:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T03:47:09","slug":"david-robinson-spoke-about-finding-it-hard-to-communicate-with-kawhi-leonard-hes-a-hard-guy-to-understand-and-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/33884\/","title":{"rendered":"David Robinson spoke about finding it hard to communicate with Kawhi Leonard: “He’s a hard guy to understand and read”"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most renowned franchises in the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs, has been home to several greats, such as Tim Duncan<\/a>, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and David Robinson. Not to forget their guiding force, Gregg Popovich<\/a>, who coached the team for 29 years before recently being appointed President of Basketball Operations.<\/p>\n

A top-class management known for its winning culture and championship DNA, the Spurs are a well-oiled machine. However, there were some hiccups along the way, most notably the Kawhi Leonard situation during the 2017-18 season.<\/p>\n

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The issue stemmed from a disagreement over the treatment of his right quadriceps injury with San Antonio’s medical staff. What followed was a tense situation between “The Klaw” and the Spurs management. Reports suggested that Kawhi had requested a trade, which led to him being shipped to the Toronto Raptors.<\/p>\n

Addressing the situation from the past, David Robinson<\/a> revealed his struggles to communicate with the eventual two-time Finals MVP, who wasn’t the most reciprocative.<\/p>\n

“I mean, it’s one of the oddest situations I think I’ve seen since I’ve been in pro basketball. He’s a hard guy to understand. He’s a hard guy to read,” said<\/a> the Hall of Famer, who played all his 14 NBA seasons with the San Antonio team, winning two championships.<\/p>\n

“The Admiral’s” active efforts went in vain<\/p>\n

David tried reaching out to Kawhi on several occasions but was met with a cold response. The seven-foot center highlighted how “The Klaw’s” quiet nature made it difficult for all parties to reach an amicable solution, especially since the Spurs are known for their players-first approach.<\/p>\n

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“He (Kawhi) really, he’s a hard guy. He’s just quiet. He doesn’t… I’ve reached out to him several times and just never hear anything back from him. I think the whole time he’s been here (in San Antonio), I’ve talked to him maybe a handful of times, and I can count on one hand how many words he’s really said to me. So he’s just a quiet guy, and I think that that’s made it difficult, I think, for all parties to really understand each other in this process,” revealed David, who was certain about the Spurs management and medical staff having nothing but the best interests in mind for their star wing.<\/p>\n

“San Antonio, we obviously have a reputation for taking care of our players, almost too much, I mean, people criticize us for sitting guys down,” added the 1995 MVP. “Now, all of the sudden, you know, we’ve got a guy who says he felt pressure to play. Which is, you know, tough. I mean, what can you do? We typically don’t risk our players’ health. But if a guy’s not happy, he’s got to go somewhere where he can play, and I think (coach) Pop (Gregg Popovich) and (general manager) R.C. (Buford) and our team did a pretty good job of kind of meeting our needs for the future.”<\/p>\n

Related: “For a guy who get paid $300 million, he should be a Top 10 player…I don’t think he a Top 30 player” – Oakley shreds Brown’s historic contract<\/a><\/p>\n

Kawhi’s historic stint with the Raptors<\/p>\n

With only one year remaining on his contract, “The Klaw” had a new assignment in Toronto. What many saw as a risky gamble by President Masai Ujiri, given Kawhi’s injury history and the real possibility he’d leave in free agency, ironically turned into one of the greatest front office moves ever.\u00a0Kawhi delivered Toronto its first NBA championship.<\/p>\n

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Winning his second Finals MVP, “The Klaw” was instrumental in helping Toronto become the first team outside of the USA to win an NBA title and cemented himself as one of the greatest two-way players of the modern era.<\/p>\n

Related: Michael Jordan revealed it was hard to win multiple titles for the Bulls because of inflated egos: “We fought against human nature”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most renowned franchises in the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs, has been home to several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,3382,3349,529,1537,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,2594,1674,2968,476],"class_list":{"0":"post-33884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-david-robinson","10":"tag-gregg-popovich","11":"tag-kawhi-leonard","12":"tag-manu-ginobili","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-san-antonio","15":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","16":"tag-sanantonio","17":"tag-sanantoniospurs","18":"tag-spurs","19":"tag-the-spurs","20":"tag-tim-duncan","21":"tag-tony-parker","22":"tag-toronto-raptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114509803890037468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}