Leonard – making his first appearance since January 13 – contributed a double-double in a 116-104 win over last year’s runners-up.
The 27-year-old reached 24 points but only sunk nine of 22 shots as he added 12 rebounds and a pair of assists on a promising evening.
The Raptors controversially sacrificed fans’ favourite DeMar DeRozan to bring two-time Defensive Player of the Year Leonard to Canada.
Yet the crowd showed no signs of upset as they got to work on convincing Leonard, who can become a free agent next summer, to re-sign with Toronto and ignore the lure of Los Angeles – the destination he wanted before being sent to the Raptors by the San Antonio Spurs.
Making a rare interview appearance to reflect on his first outing at his new – if potentially temporary – home, Leonard was thankful for the constant roars of support and the rousing standing reception he got, added to the ‘MVP!’ chants and signs.
Asked about TSN how it felt to be back on court for a competitive game for the first time in nine months, Leonard said: “It felt great because we got the win tonight.
“We’ve just got to keep going from here. We did a lot of mistakes tonight, but we’ve just got to keep building off this game.”
On the crowd, he added: “I thought it was great. They had great energy tonight, made a good push for us in that fourth quarter when we had no energy.
“I loved it tonight, it was just about coming out here and playing and seeing all the love and support.”
Raptors coach Nick Nurse was pleased with what he saw from Leonard but thinks there will be more to come given his patchy shooting.
Nurse told journalists: “I thought Kawhi created a lot of opportunities for himself but again looks, I don’t know, I think there’s some of those nights where a lot of those are going to go in and he’s going to parade a lot more to the free-throw line.
“I thought they roughed him up pretty good and he only shot six free-throws so you see the ability is there for him to get shots.
“| think some nights there’s going to be some big numbers.
“I think we saw some spurts of some pretty good play but it wasn’t the prettiest painting.
“There were a lot of whistles, a lot of stoppages, we sent them to the line a little bit too much and gave up a few too many offensive rebounds.
“It was kind of a stop-start game. But there were some really good spurts when we broke it open and things. We’ve got some room for improvement that’s for sure.”
Raptors return to action against the Boston Celtics – who thrashed the Philadelphia 76ers 105-87 in the 2018-19 season’s curtain-raiser – on Saturday (1am UK time).