In his first public appearance as a member of the Toronto Raptors, Kawhi Leonard sounded like a man who had been prepared for every question he faced at media day about his health, the trade from the San Antonio Spurs and his oft-reported interest in signing elsewhere as a free agent in 2019.

When in doubt, Leonard talked about the city of Toronto, Raptors fans and his love for the game of basketball. He consistently said his focus was on the present and winning a championship this year. This is the playbook for anyone looking to endear himself to his current team and avoid commitment. It also serves to deter persistent questions about his playing future, while leaving them unanswered.

So, here’s what we learned, and didn’t learn, from Leonard’s 20-minute session with the media.

Kawhi Leonard can actually laugh

We like to think of Leonard as a basketball-playing cyborg devoid of emotion, because he projects himself as one with the media, his teammates play up the narrative. He’s basically made a brand of it.

So, it was no surprise that when Leonard was asked what he wants Torontonians to know about him, he said in his signature monotone, “Um, I’m a fun guy. Obviously I love the game of basketball.”

It was surprising, though, to see him laugh, even awkwardly:

Leonard considers himself healthy ‘right now’

A mysterious quad injury limited Leonard to all but nine games with the Spurs last season. What was already a perplexing issue worsened as the season wore on, with the Spurs clearing Leonard for a return and the two-time Defensive Player of the Year seeking a second opinion. He ultimately took his rehab to New York, where he stayed during San Antonio’s first-round playoff series, and the divide between organization and player widened until he requested a trade from the only NBA team he’d known.

The question for teams inquiring about Leonard centered around not only his health and free agency, and the Raptors gambled on both. In Leonard’s eyes, the first half of that parlay is a lock to pay off.

Sort of.

“Right now, I’m feeling great,” he said, “ready to play basketball.”

“Right now” isn’t as reassuring as you might like if you’re the Raptors, but Leonard said he spent the summer trying to get his body back to full strength and feels ready to take on the season, which is more encouraging than anything he said in the final months of the 2017-18 campaign in San Antonio.

Asked what he hopes to gain from the rest of his career, Leonard cited the usual — championships and record-setting performances — but he also said his No. 1 goal was to have “a long, healthy career,” which seemed to imply there was some lingering concern about his longterm status. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to go through what he did last season again. What that was, exactly, we still don’t know.

Leonard avoided questions about his future

Also buried in that same response to a question about his career goals was Leonard’s desire “to be able to be dominant wherever I land.” Wherever I land. That, too, should tingle your Spidey sense, because Leonard has full control over where he lands in 2019 free agency. He is keeping his options open, and that’s cool, because there is really no reason for Leonard to commit to Toronto right now.

Leonard faced a string of questions about his playing future. The answers were at times encouraging, bewildering and philosophical. Whatever your interpretation, they were filled with age-old cliches.

“I want to play here,” “I came here with an open mind,” and, “This is how you get star-caliber players to want to come here and play,” are all things you want to hear from Leonard if you’re the Raptors. Is he saying, if the Raptors win, he will be want to continue playing in Toronto? Is he encouraging Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri to chase other stars — like, say, Jimmy Butler? That part he left vague.

“I look at it as day-to-day process,” added Leonard. “My focus is on this year, this group that I have and striving to get to a championship. We all want to win, and if you’re looking in the future, you’re going to trip over the present, so my focus is on this year, tomorrow and just keep going after that.”

That’s all a fancy way of saying, We’ll see how this year plays out. That’s better than saying flat-out that he wants to play elsewhere, as some have suggested, but it’s also not dispelling those reports.

Where Leonard remained mum, Ujiri did his best to fill the void:

Except, it’s hard to move past that narrative until we find out whether or not Leonard will re-sign in Toronto, because right now we still don’t know if he wanted to go there or wants to stay there. We do know, as Leonard said, he “want[s] to play here,” which keeps us in the present. Speaking of which …

Leonard has no regrets about how he left San Antonio

“I have no regrets,” Leonard said when asked about his San Antonio exit, “but I want to focus on this team, this journey that we have in front of us today and stay in the present time and not look back.”

Don’t look back, don’t look forward. Just play for Toronto now. That’s not the worst thing for Leonard or the Raptors. They got through media day without issue, which is the first step toward getting through a season without issue, which is the next step toward getting through free agency without issue. One step at a time. Toronto will have to be comfortable with that from Leonard this season.

And hopefully there are more laughs together down the road.

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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach

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