Kawhi’s career night shines through Spurs-Clips turd-fest
Chris Paul never has the basketball straight taken from him in the open — especially not when he’s got space extending all the way out to half-court. One of the NBA’s best ball-handlers, the Clippers’ point guard entered the Monday-night matchup with the Spurs boasting an absurd 63:5 assist-to-turnover ratio through six games, but that was before he had to maneuver around San Antonio’s pterodactyl of a small forward.
With 52 seconds remaining and a three-point Spurs lead, Kawhi Leonard extended his left arm as Paul casually crossed the ball from left to right, and all he needed was the tip of a finger to disrupt possession. The ball bounced back between Paul’s legs and Leonard pounced, vacuuming it in before calling timeout as CP3 desperately tried to locate the handle he’d just lost.
It was emblematic of the night up to that point, where Leonard’s brilliance was the story in an otherwise ugly outing that ended in a weird 89-85 Spurs win.
GIF: Kawhi Leoanard rips Chris Paul http://t.co/HdVs0aNHa4
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) November 11, 2014
The combination of Leonard and Boris Diaw — who continues to defy science with some of the plays he makes, including a magic-trick assist to Duncan, an anti-gravitational interception of a lob to freaking DeAndre Jordan, and a sky-scraping floater with a minute left, all in the span of one minute, 47 seconds — rescued San Antonio in a game that saw Gregg Popovich’s group miss 17 of its 19 attempts from deep and shoot less than 40 percent for the game. This was yet another flat night to start the season for the defending champs, but this time the Spurs’ “future” reminded once again that he’s also their present.
The last several months of Leonard’s life have been well-documented. From contract negotiations that went anything but smoothly (at least publicly) to a nasty case of preseason conjunctivitis that sidelined him for weeks and continues to affect his vision, the feel-good carryover from that NBA Finals MVP performance had been disrupted prior to Monday night. Through his first four games, that normal level of impact has gone wonting. His legs have seemed unsure, his shot awry, his energy and typical smothering defense fleeting.
Then, out of nowhere, he took over in a way only he really does. He doesn’t go out and drop 40 or dish out 15 assists; he just smothers opponents with his imposing size and wingspan. His regular-season career high is just 26 points, a total he matched last night in 37 minutes, but it’s all the other little things he does that can completely change the face of a game. He’s always been a sort of glorified role player — a guy who can make the dirty work seem spectacular — but things were different last night.
Popovich said after the game more plays were called for Leonard than in any other game of his now three-plus-year career, and the result was one of the best games of the forward’s NBA life. His game score (a formula developed by John Hollinger to give a rough measure of a player’s productivity in a single game) was a 25.6, the ¹second-highest single-game figure of his career, according to basketball-reference.com. And he was doing a little bit of everything.
¹His highest game score, 27.3, came in that ridiculous Game 3 of the 2014 NBA Finals.
On top of the usual opportunities he creates by himself on the glass and on defense, the Spurs were putting Leonard in the post, running pick-and-roll sets through him, and even allowing him to isolate against smaller defenders like Jamal Crawford and Matt Barnes. Through the first four games of his season, Leonard’s usage frequency was at 19 percent, just a tick above his career average; on Monday, that number skyrocketed to a team-high 25.9 percent, a number higher than that of any single game during the Finals, too. The Clippers’ biggest weakness is at the small-forward position, and Popovich took advantage of that with his strongest young asset.
And what’s made it even easier for Popovich to let go of the leash a bit is Leonard’s development as a passer. He’s no LeBron James when it comes to distributing from that forward position, but little by little he’s breaking out of the vision-tunnel that stood out as one of his main shortcomings early in his career. Leonard is currently assisting on 15.9 percent of his teammates field goals while he is on the floor, a number up from 10.3 percent last season, per NBA.com’s stats database. Furthermore, he’s creating nearly two more assist opportunities per game this season than he did during the Spurs’ title run, according to SportVU’s tracking system. Rather than those unsuccessful drives to the basket that saw Leonard stop and reverse dribble until a teammate made himself available, he’s finding them within the flow of the offense without breaking stride. If this continues, so, too, will the high usage rates.
We’re currently looking at a small statistical sample size here, but this doesn’t seem like a fluke. San Antonio is actively using him in different ways than it has before, and the early returns are good, especially considering how poorly he shot the ball prior to last night’s game.
Still, a word of caution to consider: the Clippers stunk on Monday night. If the Spurs had played any better outside of Leonard and fourth-quarter Diaw, they’d have won by 25 points. Things will be much more difficult for Kawhi when the matchups get worse, but there’s still something to the adamancy with which they utilized him offensively. We’ve already seen him do it on the biggest of stages, but now it’s about consistency. It’s about having that kind of game while chasing Steph Curry and Klay Thompson around all night.
The Spurs haven’t been very good so far this season, but we’ve seen Leonard ignite these sparks before. Against the one-loss Warriors tonight, he’s got a chance to keep it burning.
