Leonard signed for Toronto Raptors in July in a trade which saw DeMa DeRozan move in the other direction.
Danny Green and $5million (£3.8m) were also sent to the Raptors, while Spurs gained Jakob Poeltl in the double deal.
However, it is claimed Leonard forced his way out of the door after failing to return from a mysterious thigh injury earlier in the year.
The small forward only playing nine matches in what ended up being his eighth and final season with Spurs.
“I think that’s absolutely fair to say,” McDonald told the Yahoo Sports NBA podcast when asked if Leonard fell out with his team-mates.
“Because at that point in time — it was in March — yeah, they were getting a little fed up with what was going on.
“There were a couple of times in March where [Leonard’s] ‘group,’ as Pop [Gregg Popovich] calls them, would come to Pop and say, ‘Okay, we’re looking at this game, this is the game Kawhi’s gonna come back, we have this targeted’ in March.
“And then it’d be like the morning of — and they’d call and say, ‘Wait, no, not this one’.
“There would be another one a week or two down the line, it’d happen two or three times and the players would hear about it and be excited like, ‘We’re getting Kawhi back, we’re getting ready to make our big playoff push’.
“And then it wouldn’t happen.
“I think that was sort of the impetus behind the infamous team meeting that Tony Parker spearheaded.
“They got everybody in the locker room and basically said, ‘Kawhi, what’s the deal?’ There’s two ways of looking at that.
“Maybe Kawhi thought they were coming at him, while others said, ‘Well, we’re just asking the question. What’s the deal? Are you gonna play? Are you not gonna play? What’s going on?”
Meanwhile, Leonard is set to speak as a Raptors player for the first time on September 21.
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