It was a long off-season for Toronto Raptors fans, as headlines swirled around a seemingly unending investigation into Kawhi Leonard.
But while the basketball cognoscenti speculated on best and worst outcomes, seeing both the dawn of an era and the end of the world flash before their eyes, the Raptors' front office stayed grounded in their belief that it would all work out in the end.
Or at least that's the sentiment general manager Bobby Webster expressed Thursday as he sat down and spoke to the media for the first time since the Leonard trade and subsequent extension were finalized.
"With any deal — free agent, trade — you have to do a ton of due diligence, right? And so we did our due diligence," Webster told reporters. "We had the conversations that we needed to have. We feel comfortable enough to obviously proceed as much as you could with the deal."
Leonard joined the Raptors via a blockbuster trade with the Los Angeles Clippers, first reported early in the off-season. Heading back the other way were forward Brandon Ingram, guard Gradey Dick, unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 first-round swap and two second-round picks.
That need for due diligence, however, stemmed from an investigation by journalist Pablo Torre into reported salary-cap circumvention, which alleged the Clippers had set Leonard up with endorsement deals in order to pay the forward more than the salary cap would allow. The NBA concluded its investigation on Sept. 2, with Leonard receiving a $700,000 fine.
"Listen, this was a really unique situation from all sides," Webster said of the decision to go in on the trade despite the investigation. "Do I know everything that happened? No. (What I know) is sort of from a factual standpoint. So there's a lot of different parties involved. But we had confidence. I think that's probably the biggest thing. That we had confidence that eventually the deal would go through. We had to be incredibly patient, and there were lots of twists and turns, but we wouldn't have agreed to the deal if we didn't have a level of confidence that we could get it done."
Through that patience, Webster added that the Raptors didn't push to renegotiate the trade with the Clippers as a result of the months-long investigation, saying that they felt comfortable with the deal on the table and that league-wide reputation from a business sense was an important factor.
Once the NBA's investigation wrapped up in early September, the Raptors got to work finalizing the trade with the Clippers and doing something they didn't have the chance to do back in their first dance together: sign him to an extension.
The Raptors put pen to paper on a two-year, $115 million extension with a player option for the 2028-29 season, as reported by ESPN's Shams Charania on Tuesday. While the deal carries an average cap hit of $57.5 million over those two additional years (he'll earn just over $50 million in the 2026-27 season), the contract is $11 million below Leonard's max value over that term, giving the Raptors some room to manoeuvre as they chase a second championship.
"(Kawhi) didn't want this to be a short-term thing. He wanted to stay here for a while," Webster said of getting the Leonard extension done. "We want to have a window here, whether it's two, three, beyond that, where we're able to compete, put together a team that is worthy of competing for a title."
Despite a 15-year NBA career marred by health concerns, Leonard, 35, enjoyed one of the most productive — and healthiest — seasons of his career last year, averaging 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.9 steals while shooting 50.5 per cent from the field and 38.7 per cent from three-point range. He also managed to play 65 games, doing so for only the second time since the 2016-17 season.
2:21
