Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said he understood why Kawhi Leonard decided to leave the team after winning an NBA championship, but admitted being disappointed that Leonard and the rest of Toronto’s 2018-19 roster won’t be able to try to defend their crown together next season.

Leonard will join the LA Clippers on a four-year, $141 million contract.

“I think you can’t blame a guy for wanting to go home,” Nurse said Saturday night at the Las Vegas Summer League. “That’s what he texted me today. ‘I’m going home.’ And I just said, ‘You’ve changed a lot of lives, man, by what you’ve accomplished in Toronto. Mine especially.’ And thanked him for what he did, and we’ll look to the future, and we’ll look to [win a title] again.”

Nurse said he was hanging out with a couple of members of his staff when he got the news that Leonard, who grew up in Southern California, was leaving Toronto to play for the Clippers.

“I was just hanging out with a couple of the assistants,” Nurse said. “Got the text message and then got the news report quickly afterward. I’m not totally surprised. I think we all knew that [Leonard leaving] was a situation that could happen. He delivered big-time, played his heart out for us. We certainly are going to relish this championship for a long time. And we’re going to stop celebrating it pretty soon. Not quite yet, but then we’ll get back to work. I mean we got a tremendous challenge ahead of us, but I always say that the challenge is our fuel and the tank is certainly full. So we got a change for some guys to expand their roles maybe that wouldn’t have had expanded roles in the situation, and I think we got some guys capable of doing that. So I look forward to the challenge as I said, and let’s go get after it.”

Nurse acknowledged that Leonard’s departure left some understandable sadness within the organization.

“It’s certainly disappointing,” Nurse said. “I think, first of all, he’s a great person. He was unbelievably fun to coach, just locked in and loaded and ready to go. People would ask me, ‘What was it like coaching him?’ And I always said the best thing was I got to stand there on the courtside and watch this guy go to work. That was something that I’ll never forget. Now we got to go kick his ass.”

Nurse said that he didn’t think there was anything the Raptors could have done differently to get Leonard to stay.

“I think when we first got him there were a lot of questions thrown at me like, ‘What are you going to do to keep him?’ And we said, ‘We’re going to take great care of him health-wise.’ We did an unbelievable job, Alex McKechnie and his staff. I thought we managed that to a T. We said we were going to have a good team … and we did that as well. We knew we’d give him tremendous support from our fan base, and we certainly did that. That was amazing, the reaction and support that the whole country gave our team and him.”

Nurse said he had been in touch with Raptors team president Masai Ujiri since Leonard made his decision and was confident the Raptors would be able to get back on track.

“Look to the future and try to do it again next year,” Nurse said. “I don’t know at this particular time how we do it, but it’s not unlike going into a playoff series. I’d look at these teams and I’d say, ‘I don’t know how in the hell we’re going to beat them,’ and then you go to work and put a plan together. So right now I’m not sure how we’re going to be able to do it, other than we’re going to come out and guard you, and we’re going to move the ball, and we’re going to play with energy, and we’re going to try and play a lot of people, and we’re going to keep developing our guys. And Masai and [general manager] Bobby [Webster] will keep acquiring talent. And I’ll coach the team that they give me, and I’ll do that to the best of my ability.”

Not much Nick Nurse could have done. 

His resume now includes an NBA Championship thanks to Kawhi, so obviously he can’t be too mad at him for leaving. 

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