Nothing highlights the brilliance of Kawhi Leonard quite like the joylessness of Rudy Gay.
In the dying minutes of Sacramento’s home opener against the Spurs on Friday night with the game still in the balance, Gay did what Gay does. With 18 seconds left on the shot clock, Gay settled for an atrocious 22-foot jumper with his foot on the line. Inevitably, he saw it miss.
At the other end, after the rebound, Kawhi Leonard drove into the teeth of the defence. On his first survey, he didn’t like what he saw. He refused to settle, passed it out and then immediately got the ball back from Tony Parker for a wide open mid-range jump shot. He drained it to put the Spurs up nine. Ball game. If ever there was a 14-second sequence to illustrate Sacramento life versus San Antonio life for the past decade, this was it.
It was also a sequence that showed just how far Leonard has come. From glue guy to defensive ace to superstar end-of-game scorer, Leonard has incrementally added to his game each year, never sacrificing anything in the process.
Some might still think of Leonard as a young ascending star, but such a label does a disservice to a player who already has an NBA title, a Finals MVP, two Defensive Player of the Year awards, a first team All-NBA selection and a runner-up finish in the MVP award. His star has already ascended – now it’s just exploring how high the cosmos can go.
Once a player who had to settle for spotting up and slashing to get his points, Leonard’s offensive game is now as diverse as any perimeter player outside of Golden State.
He slithers around picks like a snake who doubles as a gym rat, with that Casper the Ghost quality that Paul George has, just with more force. It’s Leonard’s strength that makes him so special as an isolation scorer, with the power to generate space for his shot whenever he wants.
He’s patient, rarely settling, with the savvy San Antonio DNA embedded in him, empowering his freak athleticism to reach greater heights. His scoring repertoire continues to add different weapons – Leonard is just as comfortable powering his way to the rim as he is fading away from the post. He hits leaners and floaters with a delicate touch to complement the above the rim authority he’s capable of playing with too.
He remains disturbingly efficient throughout it all – last year he shot 51 per cent from the field, 44 per cent from three and 87 per cent from the line.
If there was any criticism of Leonard, anything that separated him from the Kevin Durants of the world, it was that he doesn’t score in bunches like other superstars. This season he’s gone about quieting that idea.
Leonard is scoring in a hurry. He doesn’t have the quick trigger of a Durant or a Stephen Curry, nor the manic explosion of a Russell Westbrook, but he’s shown that he can run up the score when he needs to – if required, he can slither more quickly.
He dropped 16 points in the third quarter against the Pelicans, outscoring them by himself with an array of jumpers and paint forays. He put up 35 on the Warriors at Oracle, getting to the line relentlessly. We are past the point where Leonard can be stopped.
He’s also playing with more swagger. For so long Leonard has been stoic to the point of anonymous. Now though, he’s living a little. He’s joking with refs and grinning as he talks back to them about perceived missed calls. He’s taking heat-check pull up threes. No, we probably can’t expect finger guns or pot-stirring from Leonard anytime soon, but the occasional grin will more than suffice.
On defence, he remains absurd, and in the first week of the season he’s ratcheted up the absurdity several levels. He’s just taking the ball off opponents whenever he wants to. Ask Ben McLemore, who Leonard stole the ball from two possessions in a row – stripping him like he was Jerry Seinfeld stealing that ‘old bag’s’ loaf of marble rye.
Leonard is still the best lockdown defender in the game, the league’s pre-eminent steals artist – an impossible mix of awareness and hands that are both long and adhesive – and an elite rebounder for his position. His passing, perhaps the only part of his game that isn’t truly special, is improving, and his handle seems significantly better, helping him control the offence in ways that he hasn’t been able to before.
Leonard’s humble demeanour means his profile will probably never be what it should be. If you asked strangers on the street to name as many NBA players as they could, most of them would probably list the likes of Derrick Rose, Rajon Rondo and Dwight Howard before they arrived at Leonard. Remarkably, he’s probably the fifth most famous player on his own team, behind LaMarcus Aldridge, Pau Gasol, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
Such trivia probably doesn’t phase Leonard – to the contrary, he’s probably happy with his low profile. But his stature around the league is building. The NBA has long been LeBron James’s league, and Stephen Curry stole his crown for two years before handing it back in the most dramatic fashion possible last June.
Leonard has as strong an argument as anyone to be next in line to the throne. With all due respect to the freak stat-lines that Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook are putting up, Leonard is already the fourth best player in the league. With every passing week, he gains on the two stars in Oakland and the king in Cleveland.
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