Kawhi’s chicken salad Media Day 2026
I’m trying to be as politically correct as possible here, I mean what was Kawhi supposed to say? ‘I know I was wrong in what I did, it was a lapse in judgement that won’t happen again, I have purged my inner circle of the people that created this environment. Specifically, I want to apologize to the Clipper fans, I know the performance on the court did not suffer in terms of us players giving everything we had but I do know this makes my time there feel murky and has put the team in a difficult position moving forward, it was not my intention but it was the cause so I am sorry’
Wait, that’s exactly what he should have said! I’d like to think if I were a reporter there, I would have the guts to ask the following question, a la Ed from Blue chips:
- Did you know your Uncle was asking for inappropriate things during contract negotiations?
- Why did you feel it was OK to go around the cap, even if you did not think it was against the rules, you must have known signing 4 different ‘no show’ deals must have felt wrong?
Maybe I would have chickened out and we’ll never know, and something tells me the reporters were either told not to ask anything about the investigation or understood the unwritten rule of ‘hey this guy would have never come here in the first place so lets make him feel as good as possible’. I understand the former but isn’t that kind of the way the Clippers got in the position they did, by capitulating to anything Kawhi and Uncle Dennis wanted? I mean did you read the report?? Uncle Dennis has multiple texts explicitly saying he wants to get paid!
I mean the absolute gall to say to all the reporters, ‘in speaking with the NBA & the PA, I think its best we all move forward’. OBVIOUSLY its best for YOU if we all move forward but unwritten and WRITTEN rules were violated and a fanbase has to likely eat another 5-10 years of at-best mediocrity due to his clear and explicit hubris.
I don’t know if its my age and the cynicism that can only come with having a mortgage and realizing life gets harder as you get older, but I’ve resigned myself to realize that anything Kawhi does for the Raptors going forward will only give me 90% of the full joy I could possibly take in. That other 10% will be the voice in the back of my head saying ‘this fucking guy eh?’ everytime he hits a game-winner or go-ahead basket or makes an insane play.
I’m positive this will not have any real effect on the players on the organization, these players know that owners get 5x,10x when they sell these teams and the players that created those gains see 0% of that profit so why not get what you can when you can? It’s a fair argument but its also a slippery slope that gives someone cart blanche to make as many deals or negotiations as they want with a built in get-out-of-jail-free card because you think you have the moral high ground and in an odd way, I kinda of agree! I remember when Lebron re-signed with Cleveland and a news report came out that said Clevelands tourism expectancy went up like 700%! This means hotels, restaurants, etc were all getting sold out simply because Lebron chose that city, does he see a dime of that? No.
This is getting into a different argument of millionaires vs billionaires and honestly I don’t shed one tear for either. Max contracts are now into the $70M/year range and Kawhi just extended with Toronto on a 2yr/$116M deal. So maybe the theme is, white collar crimes definitely pay kids!
My future articles will be much more joyful I promise 😊 but as I a writer I also feel like this specific emotion needed to be let out and I would wager its one that most Raptor fans feel.
We’re onto the 26-27 season!
