Kawhi left Raps for home, family: 'It was never about winning a championship'

There may have been nothing more the Toronto Raptors could have done to convince Kawhi Leonard to stay.

Leonard's desire to play closer to his home in Southern California has been well-documented ever since his acrimonious split with the San Antonio Spurs. However, a return to the Toronto Raptors looked increasingly plausible after he led the franchise to its first-ever NBA title last season.

Leonard's secretive free-agency process led to plenty of blind speculation, but after he was officially unveiled by the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday, the reigning Finals MVP finally shed light on his decision to leave the Raptors, indicating that immediate proximity to his family outweighed on-court success.

"You know, once I got together with my team and we put the pros and cons down, it was never about winning a championship," Leonard told Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports. "It was about what the future has to hold. And for me, myself and my family, that's what type of decision I had to make. It's no discredit to Toronto, I just wanted to play at home.

"I wanted to do that before I got traded there, and obviously when I got there, it was a goal of mine to make history and get them a championship, and I feel like I did my job there pretty much and that I should be granted to go play where I wanted to after I gave them what they needed. I just wanted to play at home. Like Paul (George) said, our families are able to come to games."

Despite Leonard's clear priorities, the Raptors were apparently in the mix for his services until the very end.

On Wednesday, the All-Star revealed he was "close" to signing with another team before the Clippers traded for George, though he didn't specify if that was the Raptors or the Los Angeles Lakers, who were also reportedly in the chase. His flight to Toronto on the Raptors' private plane - an event that garnered unprecedented coverage by local media via helicopter - also supposedly unnerved the Clippers.

But in the end, the allure of going home proved too strong.

"Over the last five or six years, I'll go back home and see my family, my nieces, and nephews," Leonard said, "and they're talking, playing, shooting basketballs, and I'm like, 'Dang, I missed all this. Y'all talking already. What? You're doing this?'

"So it's like, 'Man, where the hell have I been?' It feels like you been in a matrix or something."