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[QUOTE="jncuse, post: 3884692, member: 1969"]
No take backs on the Kawhi trade at all.   Would do that 100 times out of 100.

But my point on the Jazz, or the Suns, is that it would be great for a team constructed of good players without a superstar to win.  To give hope to teams like the 2018 and 2020 Raptors -- teams that did not have Kawhi.

I would have liked to have seen how the Raptors would have moved forward without a Kawhi trade, and with a few other not so major tweaks to that 2018 team.   Derozan has still been great with the Spurs -- would he still be a playoff bum?   JV has been really good for Memphis.    The biggest tweak was Lebron getting the hell out of the eastern conference after all.

But getting back to winning without a star.  I could reasonably argue that what held the 2020 Raptors from making the finals was 2 factors, neither of which had anything to do with a lack of star:
1) Pascal Siakam -  He is not a star.  But the issue was not that he is not a star -- the issue is that he played so far below his normal level in the playoffs -- there is playoff regression and then there is what happened to him (and Demar) in the playoffs.
2) Marc Gasol was great in February 2020.  He aged 17 years by August 2020.

It would be good if really good players that are arguably not superstars, like Booker, Mitchell, Gobert, Butler lead there teams to playoff success because they are playing well.

I am just blabbering at this point.   Anyway Go Jazz!
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