If we have 2019 Kawhi with the current team minus Barnes...

[Jcity08]

Kawhi thrived with the Raptors because he was joining a 60 win team....current roster without Barnes is more like 15 wins

Also the addition of former DPoY and Jokic-lite Mark Gasol helped Kawhi.

[tsherkin]

Play-in, maybe? This isn't a particularly good team. We're the 3rd-worst D in the league, and 22nd on O. Kawhi would obviously help both, but there wouldn't be MASSIVE gains on defense and we'd still be pretty mediocre on O. And we're SOOOO bad on defense that some improvement would still leave us crap, which means we wouldn't likely be looking tons and tons better.

Like let's say Kawhi takes us to like 16th on O, factoring in his availability issues, and maybe 25th on D because he's expending so much energy trying to get us to not-suck on O. So we go from the 4th-worst net rating in the league to what, bottom ten?

Even Jordan or Magic or someone similar would only take this squad so far.

[SaveTheHens]

I mean we'd likely be approaching the season differently if we had Kawhi. We may have already fired Rajakovic to switch from development to a winning coach, guys would be zoned in knowing that our potential is higher. Kawhi's example would rub off on guys, he'd be the clear leader on the team.

Scotties still learning to be a leader. He doesn't have the experience to necessarily have guys look up to him like they would Kawhi or any superstar. So Kawhi could propel this team to play better for sure.

Also how we're playing isn't fully indicative of what this team can do. Last year once we decided we were tanking we tanked HARD. It was very impressive how many losses we piled on in a relatively short amount of time. Its possible similar 'secret tank' strategies are being utilized now, which probably they are we likely are resting guys longer than we should in some scenarios. Definitely RJ wouldn't be getting so many green lights to shoot like he is; its productive in a tank season to get that experience/in-game practice in but if we were planning on winning we'd likely be looking to clean up our bad shots too

[UnbelievablyRAW]

To be fair, a lot of our early losses were within like 10 points. We weren't getting routinely blown out until like mid-end December. I think if we had prime Kawhi (who was trying and committed to this **** roster), we'd probably be around or better than Detroit currently. If we ended the year with everyone healthy the rest of the way we'd definitely be a playin team at worst.