We have Brawn and KD.

Other pieces were on the board. We had the choice to go ridiculously top heavy, or balance things out with other pieces, knowing we'd likely still wind up with the veteran deals we wound up with anyways.

Personally I liked DLo at a much lower max, and possibly less. Not a slam dunk but a nice get.

Kawhi is Kawhi though, and our eyes were fixated on building a that three headed monster.

The risk was the same regardless of the mechanations behind it. Had he dealt in good faith and made the same choice, would there have been a genuine difference in outcome for us?

Highly doubtful. He leveraged hos position to get what he wanted, and we took the risk because of the tantalizing potential it offered.