The Kawhi Leonard renaissance that the NBA did not see coming

LOS ANGELES — Thursday evening was the type of scene the Los Angeles Clippers have dreamed about for almost a decade: a raucous, sold-out crowd erupting in cheers following the primary playoff win in their very own area.

After taking a powerful 2-1 lead of their first-round collection in opposition to Denver, the Clippers are the NBA championship contender that nobody predicted.

And it has been made attainable by the profession renaissance few noticed coming.

In current weeks, Kawhi Leonard has seemed each bit the elite scorer and perimeter defender the Clippers thought they had been getting in 2019 when Leonard, weeks faraway from incomes the second NBA Finals MVP honor of his profession, signed with the Clippers in a free-agency coup.

But that was six years in the past, a lifetime in a league the place championship home windows open not often and shut shortly.

“One of the best factor for him was taking the summer season off and getting proper,” stated an government from a rival workforce. “I simply can’t imagine how skinny he appears to be like. He simply appears to be like like he is a lot lighter and transferring so a lot better and taking part in again to the way in which he was earlier than. It is simply wonderful.”

Leonard has seemed this dominant within the postseason earlier than whereas in a Clippers uniform, beginning in 2021. However throughout a second-round collection in opposition to Utah, simply as Leonard and Paul George had been taking part in their greatest as teammates, Leonard took an innocuous bump from Utah’s Joe Ingles on a quick break and missed the remainder of that postseason, and the complete 2021-22 season, as properly, with a knee damage that required surgical procedure.

Clippers playoff runs in 2023 and 2024 additionally ended with Leonard injured — a string of strains, irritation and partial and full tears to knee ligaments that left different groups so scared about his means to remain on the courtroom that in 2023, executives across the NBA described his commerce worth as zilch.

Getting into this season, his untimely endings to previous campaigns, together with the departure of George in free company, lowered his workforce’s championship expectations. Oddsmakers put the Clippers’ over-under for victories at 35.5 wins. Leonard didn’t even make his season debut till early January — when half the season was over.

But the Clippers completed with 50 wins anyway, after successful 18 of their final 21 video games. And Leonard averaged 25.7 factors on 52% capturing, together with 42% on three-pointers, over his closing 19 video games. 

His damage historical past has led followers, scouts and executives across the league to proceed to carry their breath as they wait to see how lengthy Leonard can stay wholesome whereas taking part in heavy minutes.

“If in case you have watched Kawhi intently sufficient you recognize what’s attainable,” stated Oscar-winning director and author Phil Lord, a longtime Clippers fan. “He made it attainable. His elite work ethic has led as soon as once more to elite play. However I by no means need to see Joe Ingles wherever close to him ever once more.”

But for now, Leonard has produced emphatic playoff moments, equivalent to his 39 factors whereas lacking solely 4 photographs in a Recreation 2 win to even the Clippers’ collection with Denver. In Recreation 3, he scored 21 factors and grabbed 11 rebounds.

“That is what Kawhi lives for,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue stated this week. “And we all know if we now have a wholesome Kawhi, we are able to win any collection.”

Leonard himself might have predicted this. After getting back from a knee damage following the 2023 season, he routinely described his restoration as a two-year timeline that he wasn’t seeking to rush by “skipping steps.”

“Anyone within the enterprise that’s taking part in is aware of how laborious it’s to return again from damage or taking part in within the NBA. They perceive what all of us undergo and what I went by way of,” Leonard stated after the win.

As a beat reporter who coated Leonard every day throughout his first 5 seasons in Los Angeles, I’ve by no means been round a extra routine-oriented participant. Every pregame warmup was completed on the identical velocity, with the identical repetitions and drills, in opposition to the identical assistant coaches. The irony that difficult his workforce’s championship ambitions, nevertheless, was that it was by no means predictable whether or not Leonard can be on the courtroom.

It had even led to criticism of Leonard’s need to play. However Clint Parks, a expertise coach who labored with Leonard as an adolescent and early throughout his NBA profession, stated that might not be farther from the motivation that has allowed Leonard to show from an neglected faculty recruit and NBA function participant originally of his profession right into a No. 1 choice for a title workforce.

“His self-belief from Day 1 has at all times been one in every of one. He’s by no means not believed in himself on the highest, highest degree,” Parks stated. “He’s at all times had this work ethic. He’s at all times been targeted. He’s at all times been a self-starter. At 14, he stated he wished to be top-of-the-line to ever play basketball. That was his factor.”

“Through the years, he’s pushed towards that, and that’s precisely what he’s turn out to be, whatever the accidents. Individuals at all times discuss, ‘Oh, he may very well be high 10 if he didn’t miss all that point and wasn’t injured.’ Shoot, if he can end the job and by some means convey dwelling a championship to the Clippers, he’ll nonetheless be high 10 all time with all of the accidents and every thing and on a regular basis he’s missed.”

Every of the final two seasons, Leonard had produced stretches that resembled a return to the shape that made him a six-time All-Star, two-time defensive participant of the yr and a member of the NBA’s workforce of the 75 all-time gamers. But in 2023, after a dominating begin to a first-round playoff collection in opposition to Phoenix, Leonard suffered a season-ending knee damage. And final yr, after the Clippers appeared to be the NBA’s greatest workforce for a two-month stretch, he hobbled out of the playoffs but once more in a loss to Dallas.

The sensation across the league one yr in the past, stated the rival government, “was similar to, ‘Uh-oh, right here we go once more.’”

Taking part in beneath a fastidiously monitored ramp-up of his workload, it took Leonard one month after his season debut to crack half-hour for the primary time. One month later, in March, he handed the 40-minute mark. And within the playoffs, he’s passing most expectations for a way this 33-year-old famous person might nonetheless carry out.

“He’s again to wanting like one of the best participant on the planet,” Parks stated.