2. Kawhi Leonard (Los Angeles Clippers)
- Feb. 11, 7:30 p.m.
Sixers fans have an excellent reason to hate, loathe and despise Kawhi Leonard.
He singlehandedly cost the 76ers the NBA championship!!
Deep in their heart, every fan knows the Sixers would have dispatched Milwaukee and Golden State in the next rounds of the postseason if they had been able to get past the Raptors.
Obviously, we will never really know if the Sixers would have won the NBA title if they had eliminated Toronto but, unquestionably, Leonard’s incredible play against the Sixers provided Toronto with the razor-thin margin to slip past them.
More maddeningly to Sixers fans, Leonard was really a one-year rental. Toronto was simply taking a shot to win the title that year and if the Sixers had knocked them out, their gamble would have been laughed at as one of the stupidest moves in NBA history.
Instead, the nation of Canada and Toronto got to revel in its first NBA championship. They had the parade that many Philadelphians feel should have been theirs, due to Leonard.
It also opened up a debate in Sixer-land. The San Antonio Spurs had asked for Ben Simmons in return for Leonard but the Sixers management, then led by interim general manager Brett Brown, turned them down.
If you have Leonard instead of Simmons in the lineup last year, do the Sixers win the title?
Also, the fact that when Leonard became a free agent there was not even a whiff of Interest reported by him in the Sixers.
So there are many reasons that when Kawhi Leonard comes to Philly, there is only one response fans should give him: