In a jam-packed NBA summer featuring LeBron James leaving Cleveland for the Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors, coming off back-to-back titles, adding DeMarcus Cousins, one of the league’s biggest storylines remains open-ended: exactly when, and where is Kawhi Leonard heading?

Paul Pierce recently joined ESPN’s The Jump crew live from Las Vegas to weigh in with his thoughts on how the Leonard saga might eventually come to an end. The main topic of conversation centered around whether teams should wait to see Kawhi play again before making a move for him. Paul debated Jump host Rachel Nichols, and guest Royce Young, about the topic and for The Truth, it came down to Kawhi’s undeniable talent being worth the risk a trading team is taking on.

“If you have a chance to nab Kawhi Leonard right now, and you can get him, you have to go for it regardless if you think he’s hurt or not,” Paul said.

Leonard has established himself as one of the game’s elite talents over his seven seasons with the San Antonio Spurs. Kawhi rose from a mid-first-round pick who was traded by the Pacers in a package for point guard George Hill on draft night, into a superstar. He is a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, a three-time All-Defensive First Team selection, a two-time All-NBA First Team choice and a two-time All-Star. He was also the 2014 NBA Finals MVP. He is, when healthy, one of the best players in the league and, at just 27 years old, a potential franchise cornerstone for years to come.

But after carving out a successful path to stardom over six seasons, Leonard dealt with injuries for the first time his career last season, the main culprit being a quad injury that limited him to just nine games. At the same time, he has grown unhappy with the Spurs, and seemingly they with him, making the star forward the subject of trade speculation for most of the offseason with a divorce seeming likely.

However, while his talent begets a lofty asking price via trade, between the murky situation surrounding his injury and his contract status, which allows him to become an unrestricted free agent next summer, strong offers have yet to materialize.

The severity of Leonard’s injury remains an unknown, which has made this situation all the more bizarre and interesting for all the teams involved in discussions to acquire the services of the former Finals MVP.

But The Truth believes that, if you can get him for a fair price before he hits free agency, Leonard is a player that can elevate a franchise to a championship level.

“I know he’s injured. I know it’s a mystery,” Paul said. “It’s a mystery to us all, but if you’ve got a chance to get him—depending on the asking price, you don’t ship the whole motherload for him—but if you have a chance to get him you have to nab him either way because you know he’ll eventually be healthy.”

While there is certainly cause for caution, the potential benefits of acquiring Kawhi Leonard, one of the best two-way players in the game, are endless. And from the perspective of a player who was involved in the assembly of the first “super team” of this era, when Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett joined him in Boston—albeit under different circumstances—the reward of obtaining a superstar talent like Leonard, in what has become a risk/reward league for front office executives in the era of the Warriors’ dominance, cannot be forgotten by the teams considering trading for him.

“Everything has to be evaluated when you’re going to possibly mortgage your future for a superstar player who may or may not be there after one year,” Paul said. “Sometimes it’s high-risk, high reward.”