Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and the Los Angeles Clippers kept things rolling on Wednesday night with a 108-100 win over the Toronto Raptors. The win improved Leonard's record against his former team to a perfect 6-0 since leaving Toronto in the summer of 2019.

Kawhi Leonard finished with 24 points, 12 rebounds, four assists, and three steals on 8-of-15 shooting. Five of the eight made field goals by Kawhi were dunks, which tied a career high in dunks for a single game. Leonard entered the game with 28 dunks on the season and accounted for 15 percent of his season's dunks so far on Wednesday night. His one-legged poster dunk on Jakob Poeltl put Clippers fans at Crypto.com Arena in a frenzy.

After the game, Kawhi Leonard said his extra aggression at the rim was a product of a conversation with Paul George and Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue.

“Just getting to the rim, got opportunities to get dunks,” Kawhi Leonard said. “I've just been attacking lately. T-Lue wants me and Paul to get to the rim more. He knows we are great jump shooters, but just wants us to apply pressure on the paint. So maybe a little bit of that, just trying to carry over to what he's saying.”

The Clippers have been preaching “Drive, Kick, Swing” for years now, and it's something you can often hear assistant coach Jeremy Castleberry yell from the media workroom outside their practices.

Head coach Tyronn Lue explained why he felt the need emphasize attacking the basket to Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

“We made it a focus, like we talked about last time when we played this team, when we touched the paint we scored 1.59 points per possession and when we didn't, it was 0.7,” Lue said. “So we really made a conscious effort to talk about getting into the paint, attacking the paint, and being aggressive. And I thought we did that all night long.”

Paul George has also look increasingly assertive when it comes to attacking the basket. In four of the seven games post-All-Star, George has attempted at least 10 free throws. Prior to the All-Star break, he had been 27th and Kawhi Leonard had been 30th in free throw attempts. After the break, George is 10th in the league at 9.0 attempts per game and Leonard is 12th in the league at 7.8 per game.

“We can't allow teams to get off the hook,” added Paul George. “We gotta make plays at the rim and be more efficient going to the basket. We just, we can't rely on being a jump-shot team for a whole 48 minutes. I mean, those plays and those shots are going to come throughout the game, but I think initially we just gotta play downhill a little more.”

The Raptors seldom let Kawhi Leonard beat them, often sending double-teams his way and making other Clippers beat them. Unfortunately, it hasn't yielded any of the results they wanted because Leonard is undefeated against Toronto since leaving.

“I just think setting the tone early, as the best player,” Tyronn Lue said of Kawhi Leonard's mentality to attack early and often. “Just setting the tone. And we knew coming into tonight’s game, Nick wasn’t going to let him play. They always double-team him. They trap, they junk it up. So the biggest thing you can tell PG and Kawhi in games like that, just trust the offense. Just trust the pass. I thought they did that all night, and you know, Nick’s the best at taking guys out of the game and making you play a different style of basketball, which we had to do tonight.”

The Clippers jumped from the 8-seed to the 6-seed in a tie with the Golden State Warriors for the 5-seed. There's still a lot to play for in the final 14 games of the season, including building rhythm and chemistry with the four players who joined the team late in the season.