When Kawhi Leonard left the Toronto Raptors in July 2019, the assumption around the NBA was simple: the championship window had closed. Instead, Toronto responded with one of the best seasons in franchise history and created what remains the defining “what if” of the post-Kawhi era.
The 2019-20 Raptors were not rebuilding. They finished 53-19, good for second in the Eastern Conference. Pascal Siakam became an All-Star starter and earned All-NBA Second Team honours, Kyle Lowry made his sixth straight All-Star appearance, and Nick Nurse coached the 2020 All-Star Game before winning NBA Coach of the Year. Far from collapsing after Leonard’s departure, Toronto looked like a contender that had successfully reinvented itself. Suddenly, they got shut down.
The NBA season was suspended on March 11, 2020, and when play eventually resumed inside the Orlando bubble, the Raptors no longer looked like the same team. Toronto still pushed the Boston Celtics to seven games, and one of the franchise’s greatest moments came when OG Anunoby drilled a Game 3 buzzer-beater off an inbound pass from Lowry over Tacko Fall. The shot saved the season. What it could not save was Siakam’s rhythm. After averaging 22.9 points per game during the regular season, he struggled badly against Boston, shooting just 38.2 per cent from the field. He later revealed he had not touched a basketball during the shutdown. In a series ultimately decided by Toronto’s inability to consistently create offence, that detail lingers as one of the great sliding-door moments in team history.
Within months, Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol departed in free agency, stripping the roster of the championship frontcourt that had anchored its defence and interior presence. Rather than replacing them, Toronto effectively downgraded, turning to Aron Baynes and Alex Len in what quickly became one of the weakest center rotations in the league. Before the organization could even assess the damage, it was dealt another blow: the entire 2020-21 season would be played in Tampa Bay. A team built on continuity suddenly had neither its roster nor its home court. Even so, no one expected Toronto to go 27-45.
The years that followed became a collection of near-misses and miscalculations. The trade of Norman Powell for Gary Trent Jr. was supposed to get younger while preserving competitiveness. Instead, Powell entered the most productive stretch of his career while Trent remained frustratingly inconsistent. The departure of the “GROAT,” Kyle Lowry, yielded a return built around Precious Achiuwa and Goran Dragic, the latter alienating the fanbase almost immediately. Former first-round pick Malachi Flynn never developed into the reserve guard Toronto desperately needed.
At the same time, the team doubled down on a vision that no longer fit the personnel. Nurse’s long, switchable, positionless system worked brilliantly when supported by championship-calibre veterans. As the roster thinned, however, Toronto lacked both the shooting to maximize spacing and the size to contain the league’s renewed emphasis on dominant interior play. Injuries forced Fred VanVleet into oversized playmaking responsibilities and pushed Anunoby into offensive roles beyond his comfort zone. All the while, Siakam remained excellent without ever making the final leap into superstardom.
Eventually VanVleet walked for nothing. Siakam was traded. Only Anunoby generated the kind of return capable of helping launch the next era.
The post-Kawhi Raptors did not fail because Leonard left. For one season, they proved they could still compete at the highest level without him. They failed because a contender lost its momentum, then its frontcourt, then its home, and finally its identity. Six years later, they find themselves in a familiar position; hoping that once again, the foundation underneath the star will hold its own.
Contributed photo by Birnavan Varnacumaaran
