Kawhi Leonard's Return: Raptors' Bold Move for 2026-27
The Kawhi Leonard question hangs over everything. So let’s deal with it first.
With training camp less than three weeks away, Leonard is still, technically, a Los Angeles Clipper. On paper, he belongs to a franchise that just lost five draft picks, swallowed a $30 million fine and watched its owner and top executives get hammered in the NBA’s salary-cap circumvention scandal.
In reality, he’s already halfway back to Toronto.
No one around the situation sounds especially nervous. Irritated? In Los Angeles, absolutely. Steve Ballmer has every reason to seethe as Leonard walks away from the wreckage with a $700,000 fine — a slap on the wrist compared to what he gained from the bogus endorsement deals that got the Clippers in trouble — and prepares to sign a lucrative extension with the Raptors. But anxious about the deal collapsing? That’s not the mood.
The framework is too strong, the incentives too clear. The Clippers are desperate for draft capital. The Raptors are sending exactly what no one else would: two unprotected firsts, a first-round swap and two seconds, with Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick as the player headline going west. Leonard has made it plain he wants Toronto, and with any other team staring at a likely one-year rental, no rival offer has come close.
The holdup is procedural. The Clippers still need to formally install a team governor and a lead basketball executive to sign off, with Lawrence Frank suspended for six months and Trent Redden expected to move into the primary decision-making role. Redden, notably, is the same executive who led the Leonard talks with Toronto in the first place.
Strip it down and the message is simple: the trade is still expected to happen. Only the date is missing.
Raptors at the crossroads
When Toronto’s season ended in early May, it felt less like a full stop and more like a comma.
Game 7 in Cleveland hurt. It should. The Raptors had clawed back from 0-2 against a heavily favoured Cavaliers team that would go on to reach the Eastern Conference finals. They did it without Immanuel Quickley, sidelined by a hamstring injury, and with Ingram hobbling through an ankle problem that eventually required surgery and a level of physical defence he couldn’t solve.
They pushed the series to the brink anyway.
That run, on the heels of a 46-win regular season, changed the way the franchise viewed its own timeline. Toronto didn’t look like a team still searching for relevance. It looked like one that could crash the party if it found the right star.
So the Raptors jumped. Hard.
They’ve gone virtually all-in on a 35-year-old with a long injury file, betting that Leonard’s return can lift them from “dangerous” to “terrifying” in an Eastern Conference that has turned into a gauntlet.
Title talk and a brutal East
Can they win the title again with Leonard back in town?
The move screams WIN NOW. It also lands in the most unforgiving version of the East in years.
- The New York Knicks are the standard. They didn’t just win the championship; they dominated, and they’ll start the season as favourites to repeat.
- The Philadelphia 76ers somehow walked out of the summer with LeBron James in free agency, Jaylen Brown via trade and a deeper bench, vaulting themselves straight into the inner circle of contenders.
- The Miami Heat added Giannis Antetokounmpo.
- Boston and Cleveland are still loaded.
- The Indiana Pacers, Eastern Conference champions in 2025, get Tyrese Haliburton back and expect to rejoin the fight.
Look further down and the picture doesn’t soften. The Detroit Pistons just won 60 games. Atlanta, Orlando and Charlotte are all chasing playoff spots, and even the rebuilt Washington Wizards are trying to elbow into the conversation.
Toronto’s surge last season came from punishing the league’s soft underbelly. That cushion is gone. An NBA Finals berth, let alone a title, is an ambitious bar even if Leonard plays at peak level. A top-four finish in the East would be a serious achievement.
The best player question
So who’s the alpha now?
Instinct says Leonard. He’s coming off one of his finest offensive seasons, averaging a career-best 27.9 points per game with the Clippers and earning his seventh all-NBA nod.
But Scottie Barnes changed the conversation last spring.
Barnes earned first-team all-defence for the first time last season, then detonated in the first round against Cleveland: 24.1 points, 8.6 assists, 6.1 rebounds, 1.7 blocks and 1.1 steals per game over seven high-pressure nights. He played with a snarling, all-court ferocity that screamed future all-NBA and maybe even MVP candidate if he can sustain it over 82 games.
Put it this way: if Leonard repeats his Clippers numbers and Barnes still has a legitimate claim as Toronto’s best player, the Raptors won’t just be good. They’ll be a problem for everyone.
Last season’s peaks
For the first time in a while, Raptors fans didn’t have to squint to find joy.
There was the nine-game winning streak and a 13-of-14 heater in November that effectively set the tone for the season. The trip to the NBA Cup quarterfinals. A signature road win in January over the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. A commanding two-game sweep of the Miami Heat in April — a baseball-style series at Scotiabank Arena — that helped lock in a top-five seed and delivered the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2021-22.
And then there was RJ Barrett’s moment.
Game 6, first round, season on the line. Overtime. Barrett, the hometown kid from Mississauga, rose up and let fly a three that hit the back rim, rocketed skyward and seemed to hang there forever. It finally dropped straight down with 1.2 seconds left, saving the season and detonating a roar inside Scotiabank Arena not heard since Leonard’s four-bounce dagger against the Sixers in 2019.
In a year full of steps forward, that shot became a touchstone.
The cracks underneath
The low points existed, but they didn’t define the year.
A 1-4 start with a couple of ugly blowouts rattled nerves, only for that red-hot November to restore order. The more persistent concern was Toronto’s record against the league’s elite. The Raptors went 1-12 against the top four in the East and 1-11 against the top six in the West. The playoff push against Cleveland softened some of that criticism, and the arrival of Leonard should help in those heavyweight matchups, but the numbers don’t disappear.
Then there was Jakob Poeltl.
The veteran centre tweaked his back in training camp and never really looked right. He played just 46 games, most of them below his usual standard, then turned in a flat postseason that saw him drift to the edges of the rotation. He turns 31 next month. His three-year, $84 million extension hasn’t even kicked in yet. For a team now hard-capped and chasing every marginal edge, that’s a concern they can’t ignore.
Familiar faces, one massive return
Outside of Leonard, this is largely a continuity play.
Darko Rajakovic enters his fourth season on the sideline with his staff mostly intact. The notable change is the arrival of Stephen Silas, the well-regarded former head coach, who replaces James Wade on the bench.
Once the Leonard deal is finalized, Toronto will sit at 13 guaranteed contracts and will be hard-capped at the $209 million first apron. That reality makes it unlikely they’ll go beyond 14 players.
Rookie Allen Graves turned heads in Las Vegas with his all-around game at Summer League. Veteran Kyle Anderson arrives to absorb some of the leadership load Garrett Temple carried so naturally — with the key difference that Anderson, at 33, still has plenty to offer on the floor as well.
Who’s gone, and who’ll be missed
Assuming the trade is completed as constructed, Ingram and Dick will be Clippers by opening night.
On paper, that’s a lot of talent out the door. Ingram was an all-star and led Toronto in scoring last season. But Leonard is better in almost every facet, and Ingram’s own durability questions never fully went away, even as he set a personal high for minutes in a year with the Raptors.
Dick’s story was different. After a promising second season, he never quite clicked. By the time the playoffs rolled around, he’d been leapfrogged in the rotation by Ja’Kobe Walter, Jamison Battle and even two-way guard AJ Lawson. At 22, well-liked and hungry for a larger role, he should get the fresh start he wanted on a rebuilding Clippers team.
Temple, the consummate veteran voice, shifts from unofficial assistant to official one in Dallas. Big-man specialist Mike Batiste returns to Europe to join his former EuroLeague club as an assistant. Lawson, after four years of trying to grab a permanent NBA spot, heads overseas as well.
The next wave: Walter and Murray-Boyles
Every season needs a surprise. Toronto might have two candidates.
Can Walter break out again? The third-year wing caught fire after the all-star break, averaging nearly 10 points per game and piling up 42 steals in 27 appearances while shooting a blistering 47.6 per cent from three off the bench. His defence is still a work in progress, but the instincts are there. If the shooting holds anywhere near that level, he raises the Raptors’ floor in a hurry.
Then there’s Collin Murray-Boyles.
As a rookie, the second-year big man was arguably Toronto’s second-best player in the playoffs, anchoring possessions with his defence while gutting through multiple thumb injuries. Give him a healthy set of hands and another year of experience, and he might not just lift the Raptors’ ceiling — he could redefine it.
Heat on the sideline, pressure at the point
The pressure now moves to different shoulders.
Rajakovic’s first three seasons came with built-in caveats. The roster was being stripped down, then rebuilt, then auditioning as a plucky upstart. Those days are gone. With Leonard in the fold, Barnes entering his sixth season and a projected starting five earning $173 million, the expectations are sharp from Day 1 in Quebec City.
Quickley will feel it too.
He was the supposed centrepiece in the OG Anunoby trade with the Knicks, even if Barrett has stolen more of the spotlight with his play in Toronto. Quickley’s Raptors tenure has been choppy — flashes of the sharp-shooting, change-of-pace guard they envisioned, interrupted by injuries and stretches of ordinary play.
Anunoby already owns a ring. If Toronto wants to chase another one, or even plant itself firmly among the East’s true contenders, Quickley has to prove he can run a team that means business.
Circle these dates
November 2, Intuit Dome. Raptors at Clippers.
There might not be a more charged regular-season game in the opening month anywhere in the league. Leonard returns to face a franchise that spent a decade’s worth of first-round picks, shipped out two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to Oklahoma City in the Paul George trade and got just one flimsy Western Conference finals appearance for its trouble.
Booing seems inevitable. The only wild card is Leonard’s own history with load management; Toronto plays the Clippers on the second night of a back-to-back.
The schedule doesn’t ease up. The Knicks visit Scotiabank Arena for back-to-back games on November 15 and 17 in what could feel like a mini playoff series. A trip to Detroit on November 20 might decide whether the Raptors advance to the NBA Cup knockout stage. Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs arrive on December 16. LeBron and the Sixers hit Toronto on January 10. Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder roll in on March 10.
No more No. 7
One number will vanish from Raptors jerseys this season.
Kyle Lowry’s No. 7 will rise to the rafters on January 10, before that home date against his hometown Sixers. The “GROAT” — the greatest Raptor of all time — will become the second player in franchise history to see his number retired, joining Vince Carter’s No. 15.
The ceremony will cap a full-blown Lowry celebration. The organization has planned a “Lowry Festivus” for the weekend of September 18 and 19, complete with a celebrity golf tournament, a Block Party at Jurassic Park and a fundraising gala.
It’s a fitting tribute to the man who left as the franchise leader in assists, steals, three-pointers, wins and playoff wins.
As Leonard waits in limbo and a hard cap tightens around an ambitious roster, the Raptors find themselves in a rare place: caught between their past and their future, with the present demanding something ruthless.
They’ve pushed their chips in. Now they have to play the hand.
