DeMar DeRozan Says Raptors Would Have Won NBA Title Without Trading Kawhi Leonard

Kawhi Leonard may have only spent one season with the Toronto Raptors, but he accomplished everything he set out to do during his short time up north.

But how much did the acquisition of Leonard contribute to the Raptors winning the 2019 NBA Finals?

If you ask DeMar DeRozan, he might tell you that Leonard wasn’t the catalyst for Toronto’s first and only championship in franchise history. DeRozan was traded to the San Antonio Spurs before the 2018-19 season, but he believes he could have helped the Raptors win a championship had he stayed and the team not traded for Leonard.

During the performance on First take on Wednesday, host Stephen A. Smith noted that LeBron James had been Toronto’s “kryptonite” in previous postseason runs and asked DeRozan if he thought he could win a championship with the Raptors after James left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Los Angeles Lakers.

“Yeah, I never want to discredit those guys – they won, they deserved it. I finally got to the point where I was happy for them. But I definitely, definitely feel that way. The only person we couldn’t beat was LeBron, that’s just the way it was. And I felt like after last year, we just needed one thing to somehow break through to the top, and that was LeBron going West. I didn’t get to see what would have happened, but with the utmost confidence, I have no doubt that the same outcome would have happened.”

The Raptors have been eliminated by LeBron’s Cavaliers in each of the past three postseasons, once in the Eastern Conference Finals and twice in the semifinals. While this is entirely a what-if situation, DeRozan has made it clear that he feels Toronto could have had the same success had he not been dealt to the Spurs in exchange for Leonard.