Latest Kawhi Leonard rumours: No noise good for Raptors?

Day four: Silence.

If Kawhi Leonard wants to kick back and enjoy his July 4 holiday, then an announcement Wednesday would be nice. Especially for the fan bases and front offices of the Los Angeles Lakers, Clippers, and Toronto Raptors who would surely love to get on with their lives and stop refreshing social media feeds and web browsers every two minutes.

The reigning Finals MVP and the NBA’s current king of the court has reportedly now met with all three contenders and merely needs to decide which team he’ll sign with and, subsequently, which direction the NBA’s balance of power will tilt: north or west.

Here are the latest rumours and talking points from the Kawhi Leonard Watch.

The LeBron factor, and making sense of the (lack of) noise

Save for Lakers-related fodder, it’s been eerily quiet on the Leonard front.

There has been next to zero words emanating from the Toronto Raptors camp, save for a generic report that the team remains active in the hunt and could be getting a recruitment boost from Drake.

We haven’t heard much in the past few days regarding the Clippers, either, fuelling speculation that they have taken a backseat to the neighbouring Lakers in the race for Leonard. But based on several reports that Leonard’s camp is testing teams to see who can keep their mouth shut to the media, who knows how much you should read into all of that.

Partly because they are a marquee franchise and a top-billed topic of discussion — whether they’re a bottom-feeder missing the playoffs or on the verge of potentially forming an unfathomable “big three” — and because the organization and those surrounding it seem to feed media insiders like a sparrow feeding its chicks, the Lakers will always be front and centre in the public eye.

But there’s no question it seems the team has emerged as an extremely legitimate threat to land Leonard, who watched the Lakers growing up and reportedly asked to be dealt to the team while on his way out of San Antonio.

A prior road block, it seemed, was that it was reported long ago that Leonard had no desire to join the LeBron James circus. That has apparently changed. While there may have been truth to that notion previously, James himself has helped to change Leonard’s mind:

“There was talk around the league whether Kawhi would want to play with LeBron,” ESPN Lakers reporter Dave McMenamin said on ESPN Radio Tuesday, “…that issue, to my knowledge has been dissolved and that’s through the work of LeBron James.”

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