Recruiting Kawhi

EPISODE 326: The road not taken.

I’ve been revisiting the summer of 2019 recently, not least because I keep finding strange burrows in the Aspiration rabbit hole.

The summer of 2019, of course, is when Kawhi Leonard made the decision to join Steve Ballmer’s Los Angeles Clippers.

Reporting from the time — generally centered around Kawhi’s uncle, Dennis Robertson — named two other plausible suitors for his services: the Los Angeles Lakers and the Toronto Raptors.

But this episode is about a team that invested seven figures, I am told, in a top-secret effort to recruit Kawhi.

And Kyrie Irving.

And Kevin Durant.

All of which reminded me, on one level, of this:

But in a way, these 2019 Knicks tapes were designed in response to the videos the franchise had made for LeBron James… and Dwyane Wade… and Chris Bosh.

And now you can watch them, for the very first time, alongside our focus group of Desus Nice and Frank Isola: two guys who both spent time at Harry S. Truman High School. (For very different reasons.)

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

A POSTSCRIPT, FROM BEN STILLER:

Knickstape,

Pablo