Kawhi Leonard's Impact on Toronto Raptors: A Champion's Insight

Fred VanVleet has seen Toronto at its basketball peak. He knows exactly what it looks like when Kawhi Leonard is in town and locked in.

So when the former Raptors guard was asked what he thought of Leonard’s return to Canada, his answer cut straight through the noise.

“I mean, listen, they didn’t get worse,” VanVleet said during Kyle Lowry’s block party, a familiar championship reunion setting turned impromptu state-of-the-franchise address. “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 hesitation. No caveats. Just a champion recognizing danger when he sees it.

A Blockbuster Return

Toronto paid a heavy price to bring Leonard back.

Brandon Ingram, young guard Gradey Dick, two unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 pick swap, and two future second-rounders went to the Los Angeles Clippers to pry the two-time Finals MVP loose.

It’s the kind of all-in move that only makes sense if you’ve already lived the upside.

VanVleet has. Leonard’s 2019 run through the playoffs — the shot over Philadelphia, the demolition of Milwaukee, the dismantling of Golden State — reshaped the Raptors’ history and VanVleet’s own career. That title laid the foundation for his rise from undrafted guard to one of the league’s highest-paid point guards, now running the show in Houston.

So when he says Toronto is “a tough out” with Leonard back, it carries the weight of experience, not nostalgia.

Now 35, Leonard returns to a very different Raptors roster. No Kyle Lowry. No Marc Gasol. No Serge Ibaka. Instead, he walks into a younger, re-tooled group with Scottie Barnes as the rising cornerstone, a team that’s been searching for an identity since the championship core broke apart.

Insert Leonard into that mix and the ceiling changes instantly. VanVleet knows it. The rest of the East does, too.

“I Don’t Want to Be Here” – And Then a Title

What makes this reunion even more remarkable is how the first chapter in Toronto actually began.

On the “Hello and Welcome” podcast, VanVleet pulled back the curtain on that 2018–19 locker room. Leonard’s stance from the moment he arrived, he said, was brutally clear.

“He said it from day one, I’m not staying here,” VanVleet recalled. “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.

“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 was the paradox of the Raptors’ greatest season. The franchise and the city threw everything at Leonard to convince him to stay. He responded not with promises, but with professionalism and one of the most cold-blooded postseason runs the league has seen.

He didn’t commit long term. He committed to winning.

The result: Toronto’s first-ever NBA championship, a parade that shut the city down, and a legacy that still shapes how the franchise thinks about risk, reward, and star power.

A Different Kind of Belief

VanVleet didn’t just leave it at the trade details or the free-agency decision. He dug into Leonard’s mindset — the part the public rarely sees.

“Kawhi [Leonard] changed my view on a lot of shi*t,” VanVleet admitted. Then he shared one moment that stayed with him.

He said he overheard a conversation after they won the title. Leonard wasn’t talking to him directly, but the message was impossible to miss. The sentiment, as VanVleet put it, was simple and staggering:

“When we won the championship about all that sh*t is like, ‘I’m better than Kobe.’”

VanVleet’s reaction was immediate and 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.”

To even entertain that comparison is sacred ground for many players of VanVleet’s generation. Yet Leonard’s résumé gives him the right to think in those terms: two championships, two Finals MVPs, both with different franchises, both built on two-way dominance at the highest level.

It’s not about whether the basketball world agrees. It’s about the level of self-belief required to carry a team through four rounds, on both ends of the floor, and emerge with the trophy — twice.

Toronto’s Gamble, Again

The Raptors are betting that version of Leonard still exists.

They’ve done this before. Trade for a superstar with an uncertain future. Absorb the risk. Trust the culture. Chase the ceiling, not the floor.

Last time, it ended with a championship banner.

This time, the stakes are different. Leonard is older. The supporting cast is greener. The East is deeper. But the logic is familiar: elite two-way wings win in June, and there are only a handful of them on the planet.

VanVleet, now watching from afar in Houston, doesn’t sound bitter about Leonard’s first exit. If anything, he sounds grateful. That “historic, business-like playoff run” didn’t just change a franchise; it changed careers, his included.

So when he looks at Toronto now — at Scottie Barnes growing into a star, at a front office once again pushing its chips in, at a city that once “bowed down” and might be ready to do it again — he sees something dangerous forming.

“They’ll be a damn good team,” he said. “They’re going to be a tough out.”

The last time Kawhi Leonard made Toronto a “tough out,” nobody could get them out at all.