Lets be honest here, Raptors did take advantage of Kawhi but at the same time dude wasn't really all that much around during the season. Sure he played a lot of games but Raptors never really relied on Kawhi during the season. What he brought during the playoffs was the real deal, we all remember the last second shot against sixers for example, after that we can count on his amazing defense on locking up superstars as well. Nobody can deny that Kawhi was a HUGE part of raptors team last year and can go as far as saying Raptors wouldn't be champions if it wasn't for Kawhi. However teams evolve, last year they found Siakam and FVV as great contributors, they played them a lot during the season and on playoffs as well, now they are giving those two a lot more minutes, so whatever they lost with Kawhi, they sort of made it up back by the improvements of others all together instead of getting another star.
Good point. I've mentioned that before too that Kawhi isn't really the main factor why Raptors got a decent season record last season. Actually, not just last season, they are consistent in having a good record for several seasons now.
Kawhi Leonard played 60 games for the Raptors last season with a record of 41W 19L. Here, we can see that the Raptors are playing well with or without Leonard. We have seen big improvements in the likes of VanFleet, Siakam, and many others
(I didn't mention Lowry, he is good year by year). In the playoffs up to the finals, that's when we witnessed Leonard's big contribution resulting in a championship.
And this season: