NBA Rumors: Kawhi Leonard, Sixers May Meet, Woj Says
The NBA Draft took place on Thursday night, and as usual, ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski spent the evening tweeting every draft pick in advance. This year, Wojnarowski’s preferred euphemism was to say that a team was “focusing on” a particular player, as a way of saying that they were about to draft him.
Amid all of the draft picks, the reporter known as Woj broke another story that was not about the draft, but rather one of the league’s leading free agents.
On ESPN, as pointed out on Twitter by Drew Corrigan, Woj provided a list of teams with whom Kawhi Leonard is expected to meet when free agency begins on June 30.
Leonard, who won the NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors earlier this month, originally viewed Toronto as a “one-year way station” before free agency, the reporter said. But now, the Raptors and the Los Angeles Clippers are “at the front of the line” for the services of the star player.
That’s been the conventional wisdom among most NBA observers. But then Wojnarowski named some other teams.
“I’m told that Leonard may very well take visits in free agency, or meetings at least,” he added. “With the Knicks, the 76ers, and possibly even the Nets, in addition to the Clippers.”
The Philadelphia 76ers, the team that Leonard knocked out of the playoffs last month with a last-second shot in Game 7 of their second-round series, have not been mentioned as a Leonard destination, although they did reportedly have some talks with San Antonio before the player was traded last summer. The 76ers’s coach, Brett Brown, was an assistant with the Spurs when Leonard played there early in his career.
In order to land Leonard, the Sixers would almost certainly have to forget about re-signing either of their current free agent stars, Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris.
Philadelphia, during LeBron James’s free agency last summer, got a meeting with his representatives, although James himself was not in attendance, ESPN reported in July of 2018.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Thursday night that Kawhi Leonard might take a meeting with the Sixers in free agencyhttps://t.co/0gmeeKOPDS
— SPORTSRADIO 94WIP (@SportsRadioWIP) June 21, 2019
The two New York teams, the Knicks and Nets, have also been mentioned less in rumors for Leonard than they have for other free agents, such as Kevin Durant, although both teams have considerable salary cap space heading into free agency.
Not mentioned in Woj’s report is the Los Angeles Lakers, who were not able to clear enough cap space at the time of the scheduled completion of the Anthony Davis trade on July 6, per Bleacher Report, to add another max player.
The NBA’s official free agency signing period begins on June 30.
