NBA Rumors: Why Kawhi Leonard Won't Play With Kevin Durant

Don't expect to see Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant playing alongside each other as teammates in the near future.

Like Durant, Leonard could also become an unrestricted free agent next summer, and has been linked with a move to the Los Angeles Lakers where he could potentially team up with LeBron James.

Durant, who has also been linked with a Lakers move, though, does not see that happening, given the kind of player Leonard is.

“If you’re a younger player like a Kawhi, trying to pair him with LeBron James doesn’t really make sense,” the Warriors star told Bleacher Report recently. “Kawhi enjoys having the ball in his hands, controlling the offence, dictating the tempo with his post-ups; it’s how he plays the game."

ESPN's Brian Windhorst thought those comments were an attempt by Durant to get Leonard to play with him next season, wherever he ends up playing. But having spoken to someone close to the 27-year-old, that won't be the case after the comments Durant made about Leonard back in 2014.

"I’m going to be honest with you because I know in theory they can sign together and last week when Durant’s comments on the Bleacher Report came out and he was talking about how Kawhi could never play with LeBron, I was one of the people who was saying, well, maybe Durant is trying to play the long game here and try to say, ‘Kawhi, come play with me, don’t go play with LeBron,'" Windhorst said on the Hoop Collective podcast, as quoted on Warriors Wire.

"I was talking to somebody about that and it’s somebody that knows Kawhi and I’m going to give it the qualifier here that who really knows Kawhi? Very few people so certainly I’m not saying that this is some sort of insight that is dazzling but from what I understand, when Kawhi heard that quote that he was a system player that it really, really pissed him off and that’s one of the things that you carry with him so I don’t forsee Kawhi wanting to team up with Durant," he said.

Durant, of course, tweeted that Leonard benefited from the system at place during his time at the San Antonio Spurs. That year, Leonard helped the Spurs defeat James and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals and went on to become NBA Finals MVP.

"He doing work like this because of the system," Durant tweeted about Leonard. "Put Paul George on the Spurs and what would happen?”

Durant would later clarify that he wasn't hating on Leonard and as the years went by, even joked that Leonard was no longer a system player and has grown remarkably as a player, though he did not regret his tweet.

However, those comments still seem to annoy Leonard, according to Windhorst, to the extent that he would rather not play with the two-time NBA champion.

It's hard to see Leonard holding a grudge for this long, but he is a reserved and quiet person. So it may be the case, even though he notably worked out with Durant and James at UCLA during the summer.