Aldridge on Kawhi's Spurs exit: 'Not everybody wants to learn what's in Africa' / News - Basketnews.com

Aldridge said Kawhi Leonard just wanted to play basketball and didn't want to do the extra curriculum stuff that head coach Gregg Popovich often puts the team through.

Credit: AP Photo/Nick Wass - Scanpix Credit AP Photo/Nick Wass - Scanpix

Kawhi Leonard leaving the San Antonio Spurs in 2018 after years of collaboration was the biggest story in the NBA. Even when it happened, it was still surrounded by rumors and stories.

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Namely, Leonard got injured and clashed with the Spurs organization over managing his injury. Both sides were accusing each other of various things at the time, and it all culminated with Leonard getting traded to the Toronto Raptors with a year left in his contract.

According to Stephen Jackson, who was with the Spurs during the 2012-13 season and played with Kawhi, the talented wing opposed head coach Gregg Popovich's teachings.

"He's trying to make you a better person, but he's going to put you in a lot of situations to test you. He did it to me, he did it to Kawhi, he did it to a lot of other people, but Kawhi couldn't take that s**t," Jackson said on the All the Smoke podcast. "That's just what it was. We want to hoop, we don't want to be in a corner, we want iso, we don't want to run pick-and-roll."

"That was Kawhi. He really wanted to hoop. When the injury stuff came down, how they didn't fight for him in public... Tony [Parker] had an injury, and Tony was out for a long time, and Kawhi never said anything. When Kawhi was out, Tony was like, 'I had the same injury, and I came back,' questioning if he's really hurt on national TV. That pushed him right out the door," the former player said.

LaMarcus Aldridge, who was on the Spurs team when Leonard left the organization, was a guest on the podcast. The former 7-time All-Star agreed but didn't want to bash the Spurs organization.

"I'm not going to speak for anybody, but he didn't want to do all the other s**t that Pop did, too, the learning s**t. He just wanted to hoop," Aldridge explained. "Not everybody wants to learn about what's in Africa or learn the maps. He just wanted to hoop. I don't say it's right or wrong, he just didn't want to do that."

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