NBA Trade Rumors: Tonight is the only shot for the LA Clippers to land Kawhi Leonard

NBA Trade Rumors: Kawhi Leonard has made his desire to return to his home in Los Angeles quite clear. The Lakers are the clear favorites to eventually land the star small forward but the Clippers have one shot at him: And it will come tonight

Kawhi Leonard will almost assuredly end up in the City of Angels sooner rather than later. The Lakers are the favorites to land the all-star. That doesn’t mean that the team that shares the Staples Center with Magic Johnson and company won’t have a chance at him.

The Lakers have Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, Kyle Kuzma and Lonzo Ball, some of the most compelling young players in the game, that could be offered for Leonard. Thanks to that list, the Clippers are substantial underdogs for Leonard. But they have something to offer now that the Lakers do not: the 12th and 13th overall picks in tonight’s NBA Draft.

While all of those prospects are intriguing, the opportunity to select your own talents with your own intelligence is too good to pass up, especially for Gregg Popovich. Though he’s going to move on from basketball in the near future, Popovich would have a chance to set San Antonio up for the future with those two picks for the long haul after he retires.

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The key question heading into tonight’s draft is whether the Spurs prefer some combination of the young players that the Lakers have to offer supersede the opportunity to select two prospects of their own, which the Clippers could hand them.

Magic Johnson can only offer San Antonio the 25th pick in the draft, since that’s the highest the Lakers own at the moment. If the Spurs decide having the ability to control their own future is more important than acquiring someone else’s version of young talent.

If San Antonio values the picks more, the Lakers have a few choices: trade the 25th pick with a prospect or two, acquire a higher pick for a prospect and then ship it for Leonard, or wait a year for Leonard to become an unrestricted free agent next summer and make a run at him then.

There’s no doubt that the Lakers have offered at least part of their young core for the star forward to San Antonio already. The Spurs haven’t bit on that offer, at least not yet, suggesting they aren’t completely sold on those prospects. If two of the four of Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, Kyle Kuzma and Lonzo Ball aren’t enough to entice the Alamo, the 25th pick won’t help.

Here’s where the Clippers have their chance to win out on the Kawhi sweepstakes. They have those two first rounders and a starting-caliber small forward in Tobias Harris. Not only should San Antonio get those draft picks but they’d also be able to control Harris’ paycheck, as they’d have the next year to work out a deal before he’d hit unrestricted free agency next summer.

Essentially, Harris and Leonard will both be free agents after this coming season but San Antonio would have a chance to make a positive impression on Harris and convince him to re-sign, which Leonard apparently won’t even consider, unless he’s traded to the one of the teams in LA.

The difficult realization San Antonio must come to grips with it that Kawhi Leonard will walk next offseason and leave San Antonio without any future next summer and the only way they get any return is if he is traded and fast. The draft is the perfect spot to do so, since picks are very valuable with this insanely deep draft class and there are plenty of teams looking to get Leonard in exchange for those picks, if not offering more with the picks.

If the Spurs get those two picks from the Clippers, they could also opt to trade them and move up in the draft. LaMarcus Aldridge, who will be 33 years old next month, could be shipped for a nice draft pick as well and allow the Spurs to start over from scratch. After all, this team without Kawhi Leonard is no title contender.

The Clippers cannot outbid the Lakers as far as talent goes, but they absolutely can do a much better job at giving San Antonio the tools to re-write their own destiny. The two picks and a player like Harris should be enough for Leonard on paper, though the Spurs need to cave in and stop trying to reconcile with Leonard first.

However, if San Antonio blows it up and gets a chance to pick multiple times in the first round tonight, it’ll set the future of the franchise for years to come. After all, it would be multiple players that would be under team control until their mid-twenties versus one year of Kawhi Leonard’s misery and public drama before he walks away and the Spurs get nothing.

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Make no mistake: both LA teams will be pursuing Kawhi all night via trade. The only difference is that the Clippers will be hard-pressed to lure Leonard in free agency if they can’t trade for them when the Lakers have deep pockets and banners in the rafters to attract him. It’s tonight or bust for Doc Rivers and company.