TORONTO — In the NBA, individual warm-up slots are typically determined by seniority. In general, it’s the younger players first. As the ranking veteran on the Toronto Raptors, 15-year man Kawhi Leonard could take the floor for his pre-game shooting routine right up to about 45 minutes before tip.
But Leonard likes to get his work in early, so there he was more than two hours before the ball went up on the Raptors' season opener and the first game in his second tour with Toronto that everyone hopes will be a reasonable facsimile of his first, when he led the Raptors to the 2019 NBA championship.
And while some players use the warm-up to get all the way up to game speed, even looking for hard contact from the player development coaches working them out, Leonard’s warm-up is very much not that.
It’s slow, deliberate and calculated. It’s a prelude to the real thing, not a substitute.
To extend the analogy, Leonard’s very much anticipated return to Scotiabank Arena in his familiar No. 2 for the first time since Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals hit all the right notes, the proper feels, and presumably will serve him well when the competition starts for real.
Because Game 1 of the 2026-27 season was definitely not that, though no one is quibbling with the process or the result: a 135-92 win that was never in doubt and set a record for the largest winning margin in a season opener (+43 points) in franchise history.
The Raptors jumped out to a 10-point lead midway through the first quarter, led by 29 early in the second quarter and by 39 when Ja’Kobe Walter stripped the ball from Bulls guard Josh Giddey before flipping it to Scottie Barnes for an emphatic and symbolic dunk late in the third quarter.
But the star of the show, the one who got the massive roar when he was introduced and raised his massive right hand above his head, grabbing his wrist with his left in his own ‘Claw’ trademark? The one whose hand was superimposed on the white commemorative T-shirts laid out so neatly on all 19,800 seats?
On an October Wednesday in 2026, Leonard was not the same player who scored 24 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in 37 minutes in his Raptors debut in 2018, or who averaged a career-high 29.1 points a game last year on his way to earning all-NBA honours.
Not yet, at least.
The current version of Leonard is — by his own admission — just getting warmed up, and it showed.
At 35 years old and coming off an off-season where his basketball activity was limited due to the uncertainty surrounding his trade from the Clippers, Leonard didn’t scrimmage for the first week of training camp and played just 39 minutes over two pre-season games.
He still supplied his share of highlights — bringing the Scotiabank Arena crowd to their feet with an early pull-up triple and following that up by stripping Bulls rookie Caleb Wilson and threading the needle to a streaking RJ Barrett were two of them — but by his standards, Leonard was mostly ordinary, and maybe not even that.
Yes, he was one of three Raptors to finish with 23 points (Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley were the others, while RJ Barrett had 20), but it took Leonard eight more tries to get his second bucket of the night as he finished 5-of-17 from the floor and 2-of-6 from three. More tellingly, he seemed to struggle to get separation from his defender or lift on his jumper. This against a Bulls team, to whom defence will be pretty much a rumour all season.
Leonard compensated with a perfect 11-of-11 night from the free-throw line and made four steals, but this wasn’t the vintage version of No. 2 Raptors fans have time-stamped in their brain from nearly a decade ago.
Not yet, anyway.
The most telling moment of Leonard’s night came early in the fourth quarter when head coach Darko Rajakovic subbed Leonard out with the Raptors leading by 41.
Leonard spoke to him on the sideline, and 35 seconds later Leonard was back in the game for just under two more minutes of work, bringing his total up to 24.
He hit another three, increasing the Raptors' lead to 46, and then sat down for good.
So why 24 minutes instead of 22?
“I haven’t got a chance to play a lot in training camp, so any minutes I could get or continue to play (I wanted to play) … the goal was to try to get 23 or 24 minutes tonight,” said Leonard. “I just need more reps to learn plays … you get better on the floor and trying things. You can’t wait ‘till practice and shoot 100 shots. You need game reps, and that’s what I was looking for.”
There were plenty of hints as to what could be coming when he reaches full capacity.
Defensively, the Raptors were dominant — which explains how you win a game by 43 points while shooting just 45 per cent from the floor and making only 10 threes.
The Bulls are learning on the job, and clearly they have a lot to learn after the Raptors held them to 31.1 per cent shooting and 4-of-36 from three. But the Raptors had a lot to do with that, and the presence of Barnes and even a three-quarters-speed Leonard (not to mention second-year forward Collin Murray-Boyles, who was a chaos agent all night) promises to be a problem.
“It’s crazy,” said Quickley. “I don’t even know how to describe it defensively. Especially if they’re switching? It’s like you get down going against Scottie and you got to go against Kawhi, so like, bro, you just gotta pass it.”
But the best is yet to come. With his 15 years of experience and having returned from all manner of injury layoffs in his career, Leonard knows that patience is as much part of his arsenal as his ability to hit threes from deep or bully his way into the paint.
“I don’t have targets (for when he will be up to full speed),” said Leonard. “You can’t rush greatness. Whenever medical things I can push forward and I’m feeling great, whatever numbers they’re looking at, that’s when the time will come.
“But I’m just happy to be out there and do the best I can with the minutes I have.”
It was more than enough for the Raptors to overwhelm the Bulls on Wednesday, and so for Leonard, the slow, steady warm-up continues.
Three-point Grange
Hey Norm: The other Southern California native who got a massive ovation Wednesday was Norm Powell, the beloved former Raptor who is suddenly in Year 12, and at 33, a willing mentor to a Bulls team overflowing with young talent finding their way in the NBA. “I think it’s easier with a young group (to be a good example),” said Powell, who had 15 points in 22 minutes. “They don’t know what they don’t know, so they’re all like sponges, and whatever you show them, they’re going to gravitate to because this is their first time, so you kind of set the foundation of what the brotherhood looks like playing in the NBA. With an older group, guys tend to set in their ways and have a certain way of doing things and it’s hard to break those habits. But we don’t have any habits; we’re just learning them.
Breaking out? There aren’t many players who had a pre-season better than Leonard Miller. The 23-year-old Bulls forward from Scarborough is still trying to find his NBA niche in his fourth season but certainly opened some eyes when he averaged 16.4 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists on 62 per cent shooting (including 55.6 per cent from three) for the rebuilding Bulls in the pre-season. More impressive? He did it all in just 19.7 minutes per game. “I didn’t know him at all, but I got an opportunity to see him in our gym in August and September and he was tremendous,” said new Bulls head coach Tiago Splitter. “And what we saw there was what you saw in the pre- season and hopefully it carries over to the regular season.”
That will still take some work, as Miller finished with four points on 2-of-9 shooting with five turnovers in 26 minutes in front of a large gathering of friends and family in his first NBA game in his hometown. He’s not an NBA regular yet but seems to have a solid grasp on what it will take. “I feel like I’m a pretty consistent player and I try to be. Every day, every time I go out on the court, I try to make sure I’m felt,” he said when I spoke with him Wednesday morning. “It’s just who I am, so hopefully to start the season and throughout the season I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing."
And on his knack for rebounding (he’s at 9.5 rebounds/36 minutes for his career)? “That part of the game just comes down to grit. It comes down to if you really want it. So try to go down there and try to secure possessions for my team, and if it means going down there and staying heavy on the glass, then that’s a small thing I’m willing to do."
Stuart’s (Stewart’s?) phone blowing up: The other day, Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic was asked if he could feel the excitement around the city. Based on a sample size of one, yes, apparently. “I have a neighbour, Stuart (Stewart?), he’s (a) pain in the ass. Every day he’s asking about the team and the buzz in the city; he’s really good thermometer for me.” And how did Stuart (Stewart) feel about his pesky fandom becoming part of the public domain? “Nobody is more Canadian than my friend Stuart (we’ll just call him Stu),” said Rajakovic before the game. “(Tuesday) night he texted me and said he’s (at the rink) over here, drinking some Tim Hortons, watching some hockey and getting lots of text messages from his friends.”
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