In a sport where salary caps make it tough to keep superstars around for long, the question of how to build an NBA dynasty made or broken the careers of many general managers. When you think 'NBA dynasty', Michael Jordan's Bulls, Bill Russell's Celtics, and the Showtime Lakers come to mind immediately.

For younger fans, however, the first thing that comes to mind is Tim Duncan's Spurs. With five NBA titles over the past 15 years, San Antonio has already cemented itself as one of the greatest basketball dynasties of all-time under the guidance of head coach Gregg Popovich.

But when Tim Duncan announced his retirement at the end of the 2015-2016 season, many people were quick to dismiss the Spurs as title contenders. And yet here we are in May, and once again San Antonio is on the verge of breaking into the Western Conference Finals. 

While it was old man Manu Ginobili with the clutch performance in Game 5, the Spurs are in this position due to the talents of one man: Kawhi Leonard. The young superstar is averaging a career-high 27.2 points per game in these playoffs to go with 7.6 rebounds, 4.6 assists and two steals. 

San Antonio would likely be a fringe contender at best without Leonard, but not many people know just how close he came to never playing for the Spurs in the first place.

According to a report from The Arizona Republic, part of the reason why the Phoenix Suns didn't use the 13th pick of the 2011 Draft on Leonard was because he sweated through his suit during a draft combine interview.

Poor shooting form, bad character, low basketball IQ. Those are all valid reasons for not picking a guy. A simple case of the jitters? Not so much. But former Suns GM Kyle Blanks and his team were so turned off by the sweating incident that they didn't even have Leonard "in the discussion."

Instead, they picked Markieff Morris, the Spurs traded George Hill for the rights to pick Leonard, and the rest is history. If only Blanks had gotten to know Leonard a bit better, he would've found out that while he never smiles and isn't all that personable, he had the tools to turn into one of the games best all-around players.

So what does it take to build an NBA dynasty? Drafting Tim Duncan with the No. 1 pick in 1997 was sheer dumb luck, but sometimes it takes a healthy dose of stupidity on the part of another team to build a dynasty.