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Kawhi Leonard appears poised to return to the Toronto Raptors seven years after leading Canada’s only NBA team to its lone championship, according to multiple media reports.<\/p>\n
Reports say the Raptors and Los Angeles Clippers are nearing completion of a blockbuster trade that would send Leonard back to Toronto.<\/p>\n
Shams Charania of ESPN, who first reported the proposed deal, says Toronto would acquire Leonard in exchange for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two first-round picks, one pick swap and two second-round picks.<\/p>\n
CBC Sports has not independently confirmed the reports.<\/p>\n
Leonard averaged 27.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.9 steals and 0.4 blocks per game last season for Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
The oft-injured small forward has never played more than 74 games in a season and missed the entire 2021-22 campaign.<\/p>\n
Leonard was the central player in the Raptors’ 2019 championship run, including a climactic buzzer beater to win Game 7 of Toronto’s Eastern Conference semifinal against the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n
He signed with his hometown Clippers as a free agent that off-season, agreeing to a three-year, $103 million US contract.<\/p>\n
After opting out of the final year of that contract, Leonard re-signed with the Clippers in August 2021 to a max four-year, $176.3 million contract with the fourth year being a player option. He missed the entire 2021-22 season, however, with a partial ACL tear in his right knee.<\/p>\n
That contract has become embroiled in controversy after allegations emerged in September 2025 that Leonard signed a $28 million “no-show” endorsement deal with Aspiration, an environmental company that entered bankruptcy in March 2025 after co-founder Joe Sanberg was arrested and charged with fraud.<\/p>\n
The alleged deal did not require any action on Leonard’s part, other than remaining with the Clippers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-771990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}