Nobody truly knows where Kawhi Leonard will end up this offseason, but the Toronto Raptors are still confident they can convince him to stay.
"You can always make that pitch, (and) you can believe it," Raptors general manager Bobby Webster told ESPN's Tim Bontemps. "But professional athletes see it, and they come in, and they know the difference between organizations. To live it, and to be here, you see it, and you live it every single day. They know if you're bulls------g them."
Webster says the franchise has spent six years building up to a point where it can convince a star free agent to sign on.
"You have strength (and) excellence around the organization - the basketball side, the coaching staff, the medical and support staff, obviously ownership - to where when we have a superstar player, an MVP-candidate-type player, now we can go to him and say, 'We are really confident in who we are, we're really proud of what we've built, and these are all the reasons why we think you should stay,'" Webster said.
The Raptors knew Leonard's relationship with the team's medical staff would be significant after he missed most of last season due to a quad injury. Since trading for him in July, Toronto's looked to establish trust between the player and the team's director of sports science, Alex McKechnie.
"I think that relationship is so personal, really, for any of these professional athletes, as far as keeping their body in line, and so having Alex and our entire medical staff has been a huge plus," Webster said.
Leonard's missed at least one game in each of the Raptors' back-to-back sets this season with a view toward his long-term health and the playoffs. Those efforts haven't gone unnoticed by Leonard, who admitted he still wasn't at 100 percent during training camp.
"They definitely understood where I was and where I needed to get to, and just taking my time and they're taking their time with me and just making sure that everyone is healthy down the road in the playoffs," Leonard said. "These games are just practices, to an extent. You're going through these 82 games trying to build the chemistry."
The Raptors are second in the Eastern Conference at 28-11 entering Thursday's game against Leonard's former team, the San Antonio Spurs.
