Kawhi Kawhi Kawhi

Kawhi Kawhi Kawhi

The excitement of a Toronto Raptor’s basketball championship is now over, yet we continue to celebrate this event as if it really matters. The NBA championship brought notoriety to Toronto, and with it some economic activity, but what did it do for the average citizen? 

Personally, I think it is absurd that we pay athletes eight figure salaries, when very few of them can deliver a league championship. There are only a handful of known bankable elite athletes and they include Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and Wayne Gretzky.

A great champion knows that greatness is fertilized by a will external to his/her own ability. That fertilizer is made up of a place and people who stir the inner greatness in that athlete. Rarely can one take that very specific fertilizer and seed a new crop in foreign barren ground. 

Kawhi was a big question mark (because of injury) prior to coming to Toronto. How well would he have done if he went somewhere else? We made Kawhi and now we want to pay him a small fortune to stay. Ridiculous.

While many believe Kawhi made Toronto, I believe Toronto made Kawhi.

Kawhi will not be the same Kawhi if he plays for any other team, or city. Never underestimate the greatest component of a professional league team - the fans. The fans make the player, the team, and team ultimately survives by selling seats, TV rights and memorabilia. 

It is no different than a nation’s electorate propelling a politician to ultimate victory, or no different than testicles without a scrotum or nipples without breasts. We are banking so much on Kawhi that we have forgotten that Toronto and Canada are the greater stars. If Kawhi can’t see that, then bid him good-bye. 

By waiting for Kawhi's decision, we are losing first dibs on all the other amazing players who have become free agents.

Thank you,
Joseph Pede