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Kawhi Leonard gets destroyed by raucous crowd in San Antonio return

Kyle Cantlon
·Writer
If Kawhi Leonard was hoping for even an ounce of love from the San Antonio crowd in his return, he left more than a little disheartened. (Getty)
If Kawhi Leonard was hoping for even an ounce of love from the San Antonio crowd in his return, he left more than a little disheartened. (Getty)

If there was any uncertainty in anyone’s mind as to how the San Antonio crowd would react to Kawhi Leonard’s return after his tumultuous departure from the Spurs, you can safely lay that to rest.

Flatly: Kawhi was crushed into oblivion. Many different times, in many different ways.

On top of the slew of jeers he received every time he touched the ball, chants of “Traitor, traitor…” rang through the rafter of the AT&T Center on more than one occasion Thursday night.

The “how would he be greeted in his return” questions were quickly answered during Leonard’s pregame player introduction, when Kawhi was booed into oblivion immediately after fellow former Spur Danny Green was showered with cheers.

Kawhi, as per usual, was stone cold throughout the whole ordeal.

In fact, Kawhi was getting verbally mauled by the Spurs faithful even earlier than that.

Every time he touched the rock, went to the basket, or did basically anything during warmups, the crowd jeered their former All-Star like he stole all their mothers’ lunch money.

Leonard helped lead the Spurs to an NBA championship in 2014 while being named Finals MVP, but played just nine games last season with some rather mysterious injury issues, leading many to believe he, in some way, “quit” on the team.

This was Kawhi’s first contest back after he was traded to Toronto in the summer.

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