How Kawhi Leonard fits with the transformed Toronto Raptors

In order to dip their toe into rebuilding, the Toronto Raptors shot for the moon one final time with their trade for Kawhi Leonard.

Just three months removed from their second consecutive playoff sweep at the hands of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto’s brain trust found a deal that allowed them to take one last swing in a weakened Eastern Conference before facing the finality of a rebuild.

By trading for Kawhi Leonard, the circumstances aligned perfectly for the unlikely move that could improve what was a 59-win team last season.

The factors that went into last year being Toronto’s best of the Masai Ujiri-DeMar DeRozan era will stay intact — smarter offense and a deeper roster. And Leonard raises this team’s ceiling immensely.

In Dwane Casey’s last gasp as head coach, the Raptors used the 2017 offseason to revamp the way they played offense. It started with DeMar DeRozan. DeRozan set out to add the 3 to his game, hoping that it would unlock something in Toronto’s offense that might help it withstand the test of the playoffs, where they had failed so often.

His worst habits came when he reduced the game to a single mano a mano battle.

Though DeRozan’s game is predicated upon attacking the basket and making difficult shots, the magnitude of difference between how many open looks he got the last two seasons shows the changes he and his team underwent. During the 2016-17 season, more than 70 percent of DeRozan’s looks were contested, compared with around 54 percent last season.

Indeed, DeRozan attempted more 3s last season than in the previous two combined. In fact, the Raptors as a team shot nearly 800 more 3s in 2017-18. The team also jumped from 24th in the league in pace to 14th while assisting on 24 baskets per game (they were worst in the NBA in this category two seasons ago). They bumped past the Golden State Warriors for the second-best offensive efficiency in the NBA.

Mostly, that came as a result of better ball movement, along with the spacing and unpredictability provided by playing more through the young players in Toronto’s player development funnel.

New coach Nick Nurse said in his introductory press conference, “We think we know what our offense wants to look like. … Our offense kind of held through in the playoffs.”

Leonard fits beautifully into the new Toronto system, which creates openings by making the smart play, getting into simple sets quickly, and taking 3s. It’s based on similar principles as the offense that allowed Leonard to become a star in San Antonio.

Leonard has become a puppeteer of his own length, a patient maestro orchestrating his limbs in smooth harmony to gain a small advantage and then pounce.

His game is built around a controlled style that creates advantages and open looks. It is inherently efficient. Leonard has never had a season with a true shooting percentage as low as DeRozan’s 55.5 mark last year, which was his career-high.

By swapping Leonard in for DeRozan, the ceiling rises for the Raptors.

Offense which flowed through DeRozan now had purpose, and the tempo the Raptors played with made them less predictable. As DeRozan became a more willing passer and shooter, simple plays slid open.

Leonard is a more decisive player than DeRozan, understanding the trade-off between good shots and better ones. He has never been an incredible playmaker for his teammates, but during his MVP-caliber 2016-17 season, Leonard’s assist percentage rose to a career-high 18.9 percent, and he, like DeRozan, rarely turns the ball over. The simple reads DeRozan learned to make, like the quick pass to Ibaka above, are built into Leonard’s game after years under Gregg Popovich.

Leonard is also great working the clock when he has an advantage, and his post-ups will replace DeRozan as Toronto’s best crunch-time scoring option. According to NBA.com data, Leonard shot 51 percent on shots in the paint outside the restricted area, and 47 percent from mid-range.

This is one area where Toronto’s offense could actually struggle. During the 2016-17 season, DeRozan was actually a more efficient isolation player than Leonard, and he improved in 2017-18 as he isolated less.

But on the whole, Leonard’s decision-making and 3-point shooting will make him a more devastating late-game weapon — and potentially a better fit with Kyle Lowry — than DeRozan was for the Raptors.

The real upside for any team that builds around Leonard is what he allows them to do on defense. You wouldn’t pick any other player on the planet over a healthy Leonard to contain a scorer one-on-one. And by keeping OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam in this deal (and nabbing Green), Toronto can unleash havoc on opposing offenses.

The switchability of lineups including Leonard, Anunoby, Lowry, Siakam and Danny Green is fascinating, taking into consideration the playing style of the league’s best teams. Toronto is the team in the East best-suited to defend the Warriors now.

“There is so much switching going on, you’ve got to figure out double-teams, rotations, how you’re taking away the 3… I think there’s some creative things to do,” Nurse said when he was hired.

If defensive versatility is Nurse’s focus as he takes the reins from Casey, there’s no better piece to unlock new possibilities than Leonard.

Partially as a result of the development of Anunoby, Fred VanVleet and Delon Wright, the Raptors learned a few things about how they needed to play. Lowry’s athletic prime is behind him, but his strength, passing and pull-up shooting ability have allowed him to sustain his production over time. Serge Ibaka is the floor-spacing big Toronto needed years ago. Even Green, a salary-matching piece of the Leonard trade, will help the Raptors.

It won’t be as graceful or creative as when Leonard was the fourth horse in the 2014 Finals, but outside of the 76ers, this may be the best fit for Leonard as a player. Leonard wanted a team that would operate around him — the Raptors are wide open.

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Yet they face myriad future concerns about the final review of this deal — while moving DeRozan’s contract certainly jumpstarts a rebuild if Leonard departs, no team wants to face that, especially coming off a 59-win season. No one on Toronto’s roster projects to be a star on the next iteration of the team. Leonard may also not even be ready to compete at a high enough level to weasel the Raptors into the same breath as the Warriors, Rockets or Celtics.

But for one season, with so few other realistic options available, Ujiri and the Raptors collected all their chips and slammed them into the pot. They’ll be better, and they had to be.