\u201cHello and Welcome\u201d<\/a> podcast that Leonard informed his teammates shortly after being acquired by the Raptors that he hadno intention of re-signingwith the team.<\/p>\nLeonard wound up leading the Raptors to their first-ever championship, being named Finals MVP, but signed with the Los Angeles Clippers just weeks later. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe did what he came to do,\u201d VanVleet explained. \u201cAnd he said it from Day 1, \u2018I\u2019m not staying here. I don\u2019t know why they traded for me. I don\u2019t want to be here. I\u2019m not staying here.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, Toronto put their best bid in. The city bowed down like we\u2019ve never seen before. And so, yes, for us regular people, we can look at it and say, \u2018How could you leave that?\u2019 But his mind was made up. Kawhi is Kawhi.\u201d<\/p>\n
VanVleet, who remained with the Raptors until 2023, believes Toronto would have won \u201cat least two more championships\u201d had Leonard stayed. He has no hard feelings towards his former teammate, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thank him eternally for helping us win a championship and carrying us to a moment to where I could be solidified and go on to make a ton of money, and we\u2019re forever indebted to him for that… He changed a lot of people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
VanVleet is currently sidelined after tearing his ACL with the Houston Rockets in the preseason.<\/p>\n
Leonard has been unable to find the same playoff success he had in Toronto with the Clippers, who have exited the playoffs in the first round in each of the past three seasons.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles reached the Western Conference Finals in 2021, falling to the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the Toronto Raptors and their fans did everything they could to convince Kawhi Leonard to stay with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[23475,7,68554,46516,6,681,680,476,3820],"class_list":{"0":"post-477382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-fred-vanvleet-sports-basketball-player-player-statscom-707832","11":"tag-kawhi-leonard-sports-basketball-player-player-statscom-512591","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-raptors","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-raptors","16":"tag-torontoraptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115730834079301395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477382","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=477382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}