Well I guess the Kawhi discussion will start a bit early.
Dutchball97 wrote:I can understand it being a bit personal for you with the way Kawhi left the Spurs but I don't agree with his leadership being damaging.
Then you must not be aware of what he's done since he became a leader. This is what I can remember off the top of my head:
1. Ghost his team during rehab, on two separate occasions. It's almost absurd to imagine a grown man hiding behind a hotel room door when his longtime coach is on the other side, but that's Kawhi for you.
2. Smear his teams name as a means to garner sympathy for when he makes his trade request.
3. Demands trade and then tanks his value hard
4. Decides when to play with zero notice to his own team, also twice.
5. Makes highly problematic demands of his teams such as hiring family members, trading away the farm for PG, clearing out staff spaces so he can stretch by himself, away from his teammates. All 3 teams.
6. Constantly misses practices and delays team flights because of where he chooses to live and how he chooses to travel.
7. Through it all, is content maintaining radio silence no matter how beneficial his words would be or how damaging his silence ends up being.
There's more that some Raptors and Clippers fans can speak to, but this stuff is really out there as far as professional conduct, even in the NBA.
I know that most fans prefer to gloss over all this due to ignorance or some notion that winning cures all (except when it doesnt), but goodness gracious. Do people understand how diffcult it is to manage a player who won't even pick up your calls?
If anything, his style works well when he goes to teams with already established cultures like we saw first with the Spurs and then with the Raptors.
"His leadership style works well when he doesn't have to lead".
Which is part of the criticism that he's mainly succeeded on teams where many other players would succeed. When all you've ever had to do is score the ball and defend, it's much easier to put up great numbers and look like a killer. It's worth noting that the teams with well-established cultures you're referencing had the competence to refuse his more outrageous demands, and were punished for that by him leaving them. On a less than perfectly managed team that bent to his whims and depended on him to lead them, last year happened. A "mess", as you call it.
I honestly don't think even someone like LeBron would've been able to fix the Clippers last year in Kawhi's place.
Why not? He fixed the Cavs and the Lakers. The 2017 and 2018 Cavs were disappointing in the regular season in part because they were halfassing everything and having a lot of locker room issues. Come playoffs, they got serious and didn't let any chemistry issues show. Noone was making racist comments, asking to sit in the 4th quarters or cheapshotting opponent stars. There were no multi-game collapses to speak of. And unlike the 2020 Clippers, that 2018 Cavs team was actually a mess.
The Lakers players, like many others, didn't want to be in the bubble nor resume the season. LeBron was the one who kept them together and training during the break, got them motivated to keep their eyes on the prize when it resumed. Also, even before the lockdown, the Lakers had a fun chemistry that was palpable and a topic of discussion the whole season. Now there's always the chance that the Lakers just happened to be full of self-motivated go-getters that didn't need anyone to lead them, but it's way more likely that LeBron had a big hand in that.
Besides, are you ignoring Kawhi's role in "breaking" the Clippers? Seems like that's what you're doing by comparing others' ability to "fix" them. The 2019 Clippers weren't a mess. They became a mess after Kawhi joined with his laundry list of demands and unfamiliar schedule.
You can't expect every great player to be a vocal leader. Neither is Durant, I'd say Barkley also fits the bill.
Neither of them has demanded as much as Kawhi has demanded from their franchises. When you group all 3 under "non-vocal", you're not being fair at all. If the other two are not vocal, then Kawhi is silent. There's a big difference there. Durant will stick up for his former teammate even when he doesn't have to, while Kawhi remained silent during the whole Spurs saga, knowing full well that the longer it went on, the worse the team would look and the lesser leverage they'd have in trading him. This was seen as extremely bizarre as it was happening. Who even does that?
Durant may have broken up the Warriors by acting pissy and leaving, but at least noone was calling them a cult because of him.
There's also their comparatively fuller careers helping to offset their negatives, but that's beside the point.
The line about him being "outed" as a diva is exactly what I meant when I said people are letting personal bias impact their decision on him. Kawhi acting like a star player was unexpected with how his quite persona had been built up in the media but to call him the biggest diva of the last 3 years? I don't know man, I don't think that's it.
I'm sorry, but is there a better term than "outed"? The general narrative about him was that he was the humble terminator and so unlike the divas of the league, LeBron and KD. Now we know he's not only the same, but arguably worse. I dunno what else to use here, "exposed"? Whichever sounds less biased is fine with me, but the idea is the same.
About him being the biggest diva. The (incomplete) list of his actions since 2017 is up in this post. Who has had a collectively worse resume as a star within that time period than Kawhi?
Transgressions seems like a phrase that isn't connected to objectiviy, considering the kind of transgressions certain other players have made.
I dunno. I thought it sounded appropriate. Transgression means crossing a limit yes? But anway, you can replace it with "actions" and my point remains the same.
Re: This bias/personal/double standards thing-I think you're focusing on it way too much. Being a Spurs fan, I'm aware of how my posts will come off regarding Kawhi, so I mostly get it out of the way early,
"Yeah he screwed us and I dislike him for that, but here's what I'm saying".. But you shouldn't take it as me saying
"I don't like him so take everything I say with a grain of salt". I'm trying my best to talk about him as like a neutral fan would, which is impossible for sure, but I think when you keep saying I'm taking it personally you sort of undermine my points. I won't pretend that I wasn't affected by what he did, but I'm trying to put forth the points as they are.
