Kawhi Leonard's Return: Raptors Poised to Be a Damn Good Team
Kawhi Leonard is back in Toronto, and one of the men who shared the Raptors’ greatest night has a clear message for the rest of the league: they’re dangerous again.
Speaking at Kyle Lowry’s block party, Fred VanVleet didn’t bother dressing it up. He went straight to the point when asked about Leonard’s homecoming and what it means for his old team.
“I mean, listen, they didn’t get worse,” VanVleet said, now a leader with the Houston Rockets. “It didn’t get worse. I’m excited for the city. I’m excited for the organization. It’s good to see [Kawhi Leonard] back and yeah, they’ll be a damn good team, especially in the East. They’re going to be a tough out.”
No nostalgia. No qualifiers. Just respect for a franchise that pushed its chips in again and for a superstar he knows as well as anyone in Toronto’s history.
A Championship Bond, No Bitterness
VanVleet and Leonard will always be tied together by the Raptors’ 2019 title run, a season that changed the trajectory of the franchise and the careers of everyone in that locker room.
Leonard left for the Los Angeles Clippers right after delivering that championship. The easy narrative back then was betrayal, frustration, what-if. VanVleet never leaned into that. He’s consistently gone the other way, framing Leonard’s single season in Canada as a gift.
He’s credited Leonard’s ruthlessly efficient playoff run with altering lives: Toronto’s first banner, his own rise from undrafted guard to big-money contracts, and a belief within that locker room that they could beat anybody, anywhere.
So when Toronto shocked the league by bringing Leonard back at 35, VanVleet didn’t sound like a man holding old grudges. He sounded like someone who understands exactly what this version of Kawhi still brings.
The Price of Bringing Kawhi Home
The Raptors paid heavily to do it. This wasn’t a sentimental reunion; it was a full-scale gamble.
To pry the two-time Finals MVP out of Los Angeles, Toronto sent Brandon Ingram, young guard Gradey Dick, two unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 pick swap, and two future second-rounders to the Clippers.
That’s not the package of a team dabbling in the middle. That’s a franchise declaring it wants back into the conversation.
Leonard now walks into a very different Raptors locker room from the one he first joined. No Kyle Lowry. No Marc Gasol. No Serge Ibaka. Instead, he’ll line up next to Scottie Barnes, the rising cornerstone around whom Toronto has been quietly rebuilding.
A veteran killer with a young star on the rise. For VanVleet, that combination is enough to make his old team a problem again in an Eastern Conference still searching for a dominant, year-in-year-out juggernaut.
“I Don’t Want to Be Here” – And Then a Title
VanVleet has never sugarcoated how Leonard felt about Toronto the first time around.
On the “Hello and Welcome” podcast, he pulled back the curtain on those early days, recalling how blunt Leonard was from the moment he arrived.
“He said it from day one, I’m not staying here. So, from day one, he said, ‘I don’t know why they traded for me. I don’t want to be here. I’m not staying here.’ Now, Toronto put their best bid in, man,” VanVleet said.
“The city bowed down as we’ve never seen before, man. And so yes, as for us regular people, we can look at it and say, man, how could you leave that? But his mind was made up, man. Kawhi is Kawhi.”
That’s the paradox of Leonard’s Toronto tenure. He never pretended he was in it for the long haul. He never played the hero. He just showed up, clocked in, and delivered the most clinical postseason run the franchise has ever seen.
The result: a title parade down Lakeshore Boulevard and a permanent place in Raptors history, even if he bolted as soon as free agency opened.
“I’m Better Than Kobe”
VanVleet’s admiration for Leonard goes beyond the rings and banners. It’s rooted in the way Kawhi sees himself.
He shared a moment that stuck with him, a glimpse into the kind of self-belief that separates stars from legends.
“Kawhi [Leonard] changed my view on a lot of shi*t, but there was one thing in particular that I overheard and he didn’t say it to me, I just overheard it and it was a conversation that was being had. And the sentiment of the conversation, because I ain’t going to quote nobody, but the sentiment of the conversation was when we won the championship about all that sh*t is like, ‘I’m better than Kobe.’”
VanVleet’s reaction was instant, visceral.
“Right? I had the same reaction because Kobe is my man. Kobe, that’s it for me. That’s as good as it gets for me as a little kid up into a man, my eyes, what I seen.”
You don’t toss Kobe Bryant’s name around lightly in NBA circles, especially not in comparison. But Leonard’s résumé gives him the right to at least speak that language: two championships, two Finals MVPs, in two different cities, as the unquestioned engine of each run.
That’s the level of self-assurance now walking back through the doors in Toronto.
A Different Kawhi, A Different Raptors
This isn’t 2019. Leonard is 35 now, with more miles and more questions about durability. The Raptors are younger, less proven, more volatile.
Yet VanVleet’s words cut through the noise. He’s seen what Leonard looks like when he locks in for a season. He’s seen what that does to a locker room, to a city, to an entire conference.
“They didn’t get worse,” he said. “They’ll be a damn good team… They’re going to be a tough out.”
For a franchise still chasing the feeling of that first title, that might be all that needs to be said. The rest will be decided when Leonard steps back onto the Scotiabank Arena floor and tries, one more time, to bend a season to his will.
