The Miami Heat would have risked it all for Kawhi Leonard

The Miami Heat seemingly would have risked it all to get Kawhi Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs. Here’s why it never happened.

It’s not often that the best two-way basketball player in the NBA, and more than likely the entire world, is made available via trade. As a team or person in charge of making these decisions, you usually do whatever it takes to get him. The Miami Heat should know this.

This case is made no more than by the current show Kawhi Leonard, who is that two-way player in question, is putting on in the Eastern Conference finals. To a tune of 35 points, 9 assists, and 7 rebounds, Kawhi Leonard put the Toronto Raptors on his back on Thursday night, as they stormed past the Milwaukee Bucks in Milwaukee to take a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals back to Toronto.

While any team could have presumably had Kawhi Leonard when the San Antonio Spurs made him available, the Toronto Raptors obviously had what it took to make it happen. This doesn’t mean that the Miami Heat didn’t try though.

After seeing his performance in Thursday night’s game, and frankly probably throughout the entire playoffs up until this point, many probably wondered why their favorite teams didn’t step up and make an offer. One Miami Heat fan in particular took to Twitter where he asked Miami Heat insider Greg Sylvander why the Heat didn’t make “a godfather offer for Kawhi”.

In case you are wondering, by strict definition, investopedia.com has the Godfather Offer defined as “an irrefutable takeover offer made to a target company by an acquiring company. Typically, the acquisition price’s premium is extremely generous compared to the prevailing market price. Therefore, if the target company’s management refuses the offer, shareholders may initiate lawsuits or other forms of revolt against the target company for not performing their fiduciary duty of looking out for the best interests of the shareholders”.

If you have been asleep for the past century though, movie culture and specifically “The Godfather” series of movies depicts the offer as an offer that one “can’t refuse”. It just so happens to turn out that the Miami Heat did make this offer, but the San Antonio Spurs preferred the package offered by the Raptors more.

It’s hard to imagine what this offer from the Miami Heat might have consisted of, but then again, just cross out half of the roster and more than likely everyone with promise under the age of 30. Save for Dion Waiters, this was probably the type of offer that the Miami Heat sent over to the Spurs front office.

At this point, it is just Ka-water under the bridge, although it does make for a good story. The Miami Heat could have used Kawhi, just like every other team in the league, but they weren’t able to land him and thus didn’t even sniff the playoffs this past season. Even more impressive, the Toronto Raptors not only had the assets to offer up and woo the Spurs to secure the dominant two-way swingman, but they also still obviously had enough on the roster to potentially win the Eastern Conference and possibly finally make it to the NBA Finals.

That is why the Miami Heat had no chance to land Kawhi Leonard. Drake obliges.