The only question that matters for the Raptors this year: Does Kawhi Leonard care?

One of the great myths of sport is that the pro athletes are driven purely by a need to win. A few may be. The vast majority would certainly prefer to win. But must win? Nobody who understands what the word ‘must’ means believes that.

So everyone agrees to pretend. The pros talk about winning as if it’s their raison d’etre – not the money, or the lifestyle, or the fact that they don’t know how to do anything else. When they lose, they have the sense to lose apologetically.

The fans pretend that winning is the North Star of fandom, though that isn’t the case in practice. The most rabidly supported teams in just about every sport are the reliable losers. The greater the losing, the more intense the fandom.

The closest any thoughtful star has gotten to the truth of this is Giannis Antetokounmpo. At the end of a disappointing run in Milwaukee a couple, three years ago, he was asked if he viewed losing as “a failure.”

Antetokounmpo gently lectured the reporter, by drawing an analogy to his own career: “Do you get a promotion every year, on your job? No, right? … It’s not a failure. It’s steps to success.”

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The internet joined hands to celebrate Antetokounmpo’s balanced take on what actually matters in life. Finally, a guy who gets it. And no one’s ever rated him the same since.

This brings us to Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors. If most athletes aren’t bothered by losing, Leonard is unusual in two ways. He doesn’t pretend to care. No great pro has ever pretended less. Just look at him. This is not a guy who’s taking losses home with him. He just body-surfed through the biggest payola scandal in modern sport history, and there is not one televised wince remaining as evidence.

The other unusual thing is that he can win when the mood comes over him. Few professionals of any kind have his ability to dictate the terms of their work.

In limited preseason action ahead of Wednesday’s opener, Leonard has looked great. He’s old now (35), but moving as well as he ever has.

Is his body okay? Who knows? It’s a gigantic body. If you haven’t stood beside him, it is difficult to convey how big. Gravity is hitting him a lot harder than it hits you, and he has to jump up and down for a living.

People focus on Leonard’s health as the determinative factor in his performance – that certainly suits him – but I don’t believe it. I think the thing that decides whether or not Leonard will win is whether or not he wants to. That’s more of a compliment than an insult.

He didn’t care in L.A. and, despite every advantage, a few of which weren’t strictly protocol, the Clippers were average at best. No amount of wanting Leonard to care could make him do so. His experience early on in San Antonio scared everyone in the NBA into believing that the more you push Leonard, the harder he pushes back. So no one tries. I wonder if anyone on the Clippers had a single forthright conversation with him over the course of his seven years there, or if such a thing is even possible.

Leonard did seem to care back in 2019, when a lot of people had written him off as damaged goods. Whether he was driven by obstinance, pride, revenge or garden-variety greed is impossible to say. He won a championship, but he also won the ability to turn his next club inside out to get him. One thing was good for him, and the other not.

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Once in L.A., Leonard was statistically as good as he’d ever been, but it didn’t add up to anything in the early going, at which point he fell off. The middle section of his tenure was consumed by injury and lassitude. Near the end of his deal, he picked things back up again.

Was that done on purpose? With most pros, you’d say that that’s not how things work. But Leonard is so able to dominate when he feels like it, that maybe it’s possible.

So does Leonard care again now that he’s back in Canada? Typically, he hasn’t promised anything.

“I need pressure, or I need a winning situation. I want to win. I want to try and win, you know, but I’m not forcing or like pushing for that. Whatever [Toronto GM] Bobby [Webster] and [head coach] Darko [Rajakovic] see.”

That’s a hell of a transition.

No one has more to gain from this project than Rajakovic. If the perma-positive Serb can coax out the best version of Leonard, he immediately becomes the NBA’s great psychoanalyst.

Aside from extending his professional life, Leonard doesn’t have that much to gain during his second stint in Toronto. He’s already won two championships beginning from deep in the rough. His reputation as a player who could create his own reality is embedded. Bizarrely, losing burnishes it. It only makes Leonard seem more witchy.

This is where somebody says something about the fires still burning. With Leonard, you wonder if they ever have. Or did he just wake up some days and feel like being the best in the world? Were I Toronto, I would forensically audit his routine in April-June, 2019. Maybe it was as simple as where he got his morning bagel.

Is that place still open? And if not, can it be reconstructed and its former staff rehired, Nathan-Fielder-style, inside Scotiabank Arena?

Toronto’s challenge this year isn’t integrating Leonard as you would a typical great player. It’s accepting that they have no control over Leonard’s levers. All they can do is hope he feels like pulling them himself.