NBA – Former Spurs on Kawhi Leonard/Tony Parker beef: «In San Antonio, they don’t do that»

Par Joël Pütz | Journaliste sportif

To this day, Kawhi Leonard’s departure from San Antonio continues to be a hot topic, as does Tony Parker’s alleged role in it. However, a former member of the franchise wanted to set the record straight about the two men.

The Spurs’ future could have looked very different. As in Victor Wembanyama might never have joined the famous Texan team… Indeed, while the team managed to draft him in 2023, it was also the pinnacle of a long period of collective mediocrity, with several consecutive seasons without ever making the playoffs.

However, while the French center now embodies all the hopes of his franchise, this role fell to someone else just a few years ago. More precisely, Kawhi Leonard, champion and Finals MVP in 2014, who was initially supposed to take over from the trio of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker. Except that, as we know, things didn’t go as planned at all…

Danny Green gives his opinion on Kawhi Leonard’s departure

Between The Claw’s major injury during the 2017 playoffs and Tony Parker’s highly controversial comment about him, tensions between the player and his franchise culminated in his trade to the Raptors a few months later. Seven years later, some still accuse the Frenchman of being the cause of this internal fiasco. But their former teammate Danny Green was keen to clarify this on the All The Smoke podcast:

San Antonio they don’t treat anybody like superstars. And his uncle, kind of and rightfully so, thought he should’ve been treated like a superstar. But Timmy didn’t. Pop never had to treat Timmy like that cuz Timmy never needed, never cared to be that. But I think you know, Kawhi had the injury, Tony said some things to the media, then Pop said things to the media.

Uncle Dennis was like “nah”. Kawhi came back for like 9 games and then it was like: “I gotta talk to Kawhi’s people”. From my understanding, they saw that as disrespectful and some of the things Tony said they thought: “Yeah, that’s disrespectful”. And then the rumblings were: “He’s not going to be seen in the San Antonio Spurs uniform again”.

I never asked them what happened. One day maybe, we’ll get a chance to chop it up, when he’s done hooping. But I was fortunate enough to play with him in San Antonio and also again in Toronto We had a great year.

The superstar wingman didn’t have much to regret about the turn of events indeed, as in 2019 he won his second title and another Finals MVP.