For a part of the NBA season that is not strictly a part of the NBA season, this is a pretty entertaining part of the NBA season. Teams don’t begin training camp in earnest until today, but Monday was media day, which meant players wearing their uniforms around team practice facilities, getting photographed, and being…

When the Toronto Raptors officially introduced Kawhi Leonard today, he made it clear he’s trying to distance himself from his reputation as the oddball who mysteriously missed most of last season with the Spurs.

The fact that Boris Diaw was still out there somewhere in this large world playing basketball in public, even if I wasn’t around to look at it, lit a happy little flame in my brain. If I was in a good mood at any given time, it could be attributed in some barely measurable way to that fact. Yesterday it was…

Kawhi Leonard wasn’t happy to be in San Antonio. Now, he’s not happy to be in Toronto. Regardless of his feelings, he’ll be stuck in Canada for the foreseeable future on a year-long recruiting pitch, all while he’s seemingly got his sights set on his hometown of Los Angeles. As Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne…

Management, especially in a volatile industry like professional basketball, will say and do a lot of shit to appease the labor. Blake Griffin received a fake jersey retirement procession during the Clippers’ bid to get to him to re-sign last summer, and the team also put him on a t-shirt alongside JFK, Martin Luther…

So if you haven’t seen by now, the San Antonio Spurs traded disgruntled and vaguely hobbled star swingman Kawhi Leonard to the Toronto Raptors this morning, in exchange for not-previously-disgruntled-but-now-extremely-upset star swingman DeMar DeRozan. It’s hard to know exactly what to make of the trade, which is…

Players are often understandably unhappy about being traded, because nobody much likes suddenly learning that they are going to spend the next few months or years living and playing in a city that they did not plan on living or playing in. Trades lead to hard feelings, but usually those are effectively papered over…

The good news, for Raptors fans: Kawhi Leonard is reportedly heading to Toronto in a trade. The potential bad news for Raptors fans, but good news for Lakers fans and fans of NBA drama:

There’s no particular reason why this should be received as bad news, but it is something of a bummer: Tony Parker is leaving the San Antonio Spurs after 17 seasons to serve as a backup to Kemba Walker in Charlotte.

At this point, the relationship between Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs seems irrevocably broken, and the only thing left to settle is whether the Lakers wait for him to hit free agency or the Spurs take a cut-rate deal to get something back in return for their superstar. ESPN’s Spurs reporter, Michael Wright, recently…

It’s curious how passively worded this ESPN report from Wednesday was, as if “pressure is mounting” all by itself, rather than being applied by anyone:

The Kawhi Leonard trade saga has so far been short on specific news about the possibly still-injured Spurs forward’s future home, though the Lakers are supposedly the California native’s preferred destination. But it’s getting long on ridiculously specific media reports, which is really what’s necessary in the NBA…

From Cleveland.com’s Terry Pluto comes a report that the Cleveland Cavaliers “are one of several teams making calls to San Antonio about Kawhi Leonard.”

This afternoon, more or less every basketball reporter simultaneously reported that Kawhi Leonard wanted out of San Antonio. The coordination of reports from Jabari Young, Chris Haynes, and Shams Charania suggests that the “league sources” behind this know what they’re talking about, and want everyone else to know it…

Becky Hammon, the first woman to serve as an assistant coach in NBA history, will reportedly interview for the vacant head coach position with the Milwaukee Bucks. Per ESPN:

The Spurs were quietly bounced from the playoffs last night, thus ending a strange season that was marred by rare internal drama. LaMarcus Aldridge was San Antonio’s lone postseason bright spot, as he averaged 23.6 points, 9.2 rebounds, and 60 percent shooting from three for the series. In last night’s closeout game,…

The San Antonio Spurs have announced that head coach Gregg Popovich will not be with the team for tonight’s playoff game against the Warriors. Last night, the team announced that Popovich’s wife, Erin, had died at the age of 67 after battling an illness.

Erin Popovich, wife of San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, died today at the age of 67 after battling an illness:

They have to say they believe they can win, of course. More than that, they have to actually believe that it’s at least possible, or they would not be the sorts of people capable of claiming the West’s seventh playoff seed with a roster that looks like somebody sat on a keyboard. None of the rest of us are bound by…

The Spurs are down 0-2 to the Warriors in their first-round playoff series, and Kawhi Leonard is not with the team. The reasons for that are still somehow impossibly murky—Leonard has been dealing with an injured quad muscle all year; he may or may not have been healthy enough to play for some time now; he may or may…