Tacoma wrote:GG0701 wrote:vbmeer wrote:He went to Rivers house, he boarded a plane at 5:30am his time in the morning to fly all the way to Toronto to meet Masai.
Lakers were 3rd place. He actually had a meeting with Paul George that he moved the Lakers meeting and didn't tell them about.
No one wants to believe there was a chance, out of the implication of there being a mistake done on Masai's part, but there was a small chance of him staying if Paul George to Clippers didn't happen.
This is spot on. I don’t see how you can get around the fact that he gave the lowest priority to the Lakers meeting. Shams also reported that PG and RW and OKC management were discontent with each other. The only person who has contradicted this is Presti who has a vested interest in it not going public.
Doc has talked about this before and how the trade got called on/off like 5x in the same day and at 5pm they finally thought it was over and no deal.
This explains further Masai saying Kawhi gave him a challenge and Jalen’s weird certainty over 99%. Masai may have thought the price was too high, he didn’t need to change the team or that the Clippers were never going to agree to what OKC was asking for so just wait it out but Kawhi’s actions show imo who was 1/2.
The meeting with Masai was a courtesy meeting out of respect to the team that brought him a ring. According to stories from the Raptors’ camp, Kawhi’s team did say to Maasai PG was a condition to him re-signing but he did not give a guarantee if you sign PG I’ll sign with you. He did give LAC that guarantee, but not Toronto). Masai wasn’t doing any trade without this guarantee.
Kawhi also called and told LAL if they wanted to sign him, hold off on the AD trade because if they didn’t there would not be enough cap room to sign Kawhi. Were the Raptors been in “2nd place” then that call to the LAL would not have been done.
He said before again and again that he wanted to be in LA to be close to his family and the preponderance of the evidence during the free agency process supports his words that he wanted to sign with an LA team. The LAL was his back up plan, period.
I don’t believe he flew to TOR and stayed days out of courtesy. I also don’t believe he stuck around after the season and met with Masai then for that reason.
Doc has given i think 3 interviews about this. In all of them it was this is what Kawhi wants. He said they had to call Kawhi when they got the trade done but before they pulled the trigger to get a commitment from him.
Yes it would. The Lakers were the result the Clippers were scared of. Also it doesn’t make sense to cut backup options while you’re still uncertain if what you want is going to happen.
That his signing was contingent on LAC improving their team/getting PG shows winning (and in a situation he felt comfortable with) were priorities to him.
