For the overwhelming part of two remarkable decades, the San Antonio Spurs operated inside an NBA time capsule, a Texas-size vacuum, an orderly league of their own. They played with a one-for-all precision and went about their off-court business with a committed predictability.

They were Spurs to the bone, appearing to the outside world, individually and collectively, to have a conscience for comportment and no penchant for crisis.

They persisted in this commercially unsexy manner to little fanfare and only at the conclusion of their fifth championship run in 2014 to any widespread acclaim, and that mostly because they had thoroughly dismantled LeBron James’ Miami Heat.

They did not seem to mind the public indifference. In fact, the Spurs — especially Tim Duncan, their foundational centerpiece, and coach Gregg Popovich — appeared to want it no other way.

“I think maybe there’s a little smirk on the coach’s face,” Brent Barry, a onetime Spur and now a television analyst, told me as the Spurs were sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers out of the 2007 NBA Finals. “And also on the organization’s face, that it’s not that exciting to people outside of San Antonio, that we’re doing it quietly, something special, right here, and we get to enjoy it.”

That they sustained such an approach for so long in a league that not only runs but thrives on a general state of disorder was largely attributable to Duncan, the stoic assassin, and David Robinson, the franchise hub who preceded him. Stars do not establish team rules, but their acquiescence goes a long way in enforcing them.

Popovich was the acerbic but caring old-school master, R.C. Buford the erudite front-office presence and Peter Holt the owner who let them do their jobs.

Then along came Kawhi Leonard in 2011, in a draft-night trade that might have been voided on the grounds of extreme cruelty to the unsuspecting fans of basketball-mad Indiana. In a short while he was hailed as the ascendant star and perfectly disposed personality to ultimately succeed the aging Duncan. In the 2014 five-game wipeout of the Heat, he wore an endearingly astonished look when declared the MVP of the championship series.

Now Leonard, considered by many to be the best two-way player in the game and among the top five players overall, is gone. He and backcourt mainstay Danny Green were traded by the Spurs to Toronto on Wednesday in a multiplayer deal that brings back an All-Star in DeMar DeRozan, a young center in Jakob Poeltl and a conditional first-round draft pick.

As reluctantly devised trades go, it could have been worse, given the unfamiliar bind the Spurs were shoved into by Leonard’s reported intention to play out the final year of his contract and sign as a free agent next summer with the Los Angeles Lakers.

So what happened? A slow-healing quadriceps injury happened, a season of supposed, if improbable, contention slipping away with Leonard appearing in only nine games before distancing himself from increasingly agitated teammates and with a bewildered front office at his mercy.

They all thought they knew the soft-spoken, camera-averse Leonard, as did we in the media, which hastily typecast him Duncan 2.0.

After Game 1 of the 2013 NBA Finals, in which the Spurs would lose to the Heat in a crushing Game 7, I wrote, of Leonard: “If the Spurs had gone to a factory that produced NBA players and ordered one to fit their team personality, Leonard would have been handmade and delivered to their doorstep.”

But Leonard was born of flesh and blood, not manufactured of steel. At 27, with free agency on the horizon, he has been on the verge of wealth that was once unimaginable to him over the past 18 months while dealing with a nagging injury that had to sow doubt and fear.

Maybe the Spurs could have handled the situation better. Maybe Leonard began listening to people whose advice made the point moot.

Back in 2013, after that Game 1 victory in Miami, Leonard stood in the Spurs’ cramped locker room, offering answers bland and brief to reporters wanting to know how he had held James to 18 points. Nearby, I looked on with Buford and asked him if Leonard, in only his second pro season, had demonstrated any nerves before the final series.

“He doesn’t say enough for anybody to understand how he feels,” Buford said with a laugh.

Yesterday’s tease is today’s torment. The Spurs never did learn exactly what was going on inside Leonard’s head through their shared but separate ordeal. Not even a postseason visit by Popovich to Leonard at his Southern California home could re-establish the bond.

What is left of the relationship is the kind of residual chaos that makes the NBA the 24-hour narrative looping from one show to another on the league’s partner networks.

Leonard was said to be miserable at the thought of playing even one season in Toronto, which seems to be set on the hope that a deep playoff run may persuade Leonard to ditch the Los Angeles sun for Ontario snows.

DeRozan feels betrayed after nine years with the Raptors. He has two years remaining on his contract and a player option for a third. Who knows what the future now brings for him and the Spurs?

Holt, the owner, has been involved in a high-profile split with his wife, Julianna, a Spurs co-chief executive, though reports have indicated there are no plans to sell the team. Popovich, 69, has been mourning his wife, Erin, who passed away in April. Buford has been at Popovich’s side through it all, but it would not be shocking if his name began being floated for front-office jobs elsewhere.

Popovich still has LaMarcus Aldridge, another All-Star, and could well help DeRozan become a more self-confident leading man within the Spurs’ system. After San Antonio’s two decades of sustained excellence, only a fool would declare the Spurs dead and buried, even without Leonard.

“We wish him well, but at this point it’s time to move on,” Popovich said.

Given the dominance of Golden State and Houston in the West, with Utah and others on the rise, the question is: Move on to what? Most likely, to an existential reality not all that unlike the rest of the NBA.

Welcome, Spurs, to a life of occasional or continuous chaos. Check your social media often, while waiting for the next basketball shoe to drop.