{"id":895536,"date":"2026-09-17T17:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T17:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895536\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T17:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T17:06:10","slug":"kawhi-leonard-isnt-championship-chasing-reflects-on-trade-to-raptors-from-clippers-in-new-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895536\/","title":{"rendered":"Kawhi Leonard Isn’t ‘Championship Chasing,’ Reflects on Trade to Raptors from Clippers in New Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that he is officially back<\/a> with the Toronto Raptors, Kawhi Leonard has reflected on the process that led to his return to the team he won a championship with during the 2018-19 season. <\/p>\n

In a new video released by the Raptors (starts at 4:00 mark), Leonard explains he’s not “championship chasing” at this latter stage of his career. <\/p>\n

“I’m not really championship chasing, trying to find the best team that can win,” he said. “You know, I didn’t want to put on a thousand jerseys. The city took a liking to my family. I took a liking to the city. Really enjoyed it. My son was born here, and you know, he’s been asking me forever when he’s gonna come back. So, now he’s back, and he’s able to see it rather than me tell him the great stories that happened.”<\/p>\n

Even though Leonard isn’t only pursuing titles, it’s hard not to look at what his addition means for the Raptors in their quest to get back to being a championship contender in the Eastern Conference. <\/p>\n

Toronto improved by 16 wins from 2024-25 to 2025-26, finishing with a 46-36 record last season. It was the team’s most victories in a season since 2019-20. <\/p>\n

Leading the way for that improvement was Scottie Barnes, who made the All-Star team for the second time in three years and finished fifth in Defensive Player of the Year voting. <\/p>\n

It’s not a surprise at one point in the video, Leonard said the Raptors are “his team” referencing Barnes and he wants to do “whatever it takes to help” in whatever ways he can. <\/p>\n

A healthy Leonard can be a game-changer for the Raptors and the Eastern Conference. He is coming off one of the best regular-season performances of his career, averaging 27.9 points on 50.5 percent shooting, 6.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game in 2025-26. <\/p>\n

The most encouraging stat from Leonard last season was 65 games played, his second-most since 2017-18. If the Raptors get that many games from him in 2026-27, they have the pieces to challenge the top-tier teams in the East like the New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that he is officially back with the Toronto Raptors, Kawhi Leonard has reflected on the process that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-895536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}