Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard has come a long way since his performance in the 2014 NBA Finals that netted him the MVP of the series. Then a member Gregg Popovich's San Antonio Spurs, Leonard led the takedown of Erik Spoelstra's Miami Heat, ending their attempt at a dynasty. Although Leonard was a much different player on a different team with a different role, that series certainly marked the beginning of great things to come for the San Diego State product.
Leonard has taken big jumps every season since then, none bigger than the incredible postseason run he put forth with the Toronto Raptors. Not many could've seen the jump Leonard made as a scorer and a playmaker, including Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich.
“When we made that trade for him and drafted him, we didn’t know he was gonna be Kawhi Leonard just like we didn’t know Manu [Ginobili] was gonna be Manu when we drafted him at whatever, 57 or something like that,” Popovich told ClutchPoints back in 2019. “People who tell you that are full of crap. You never know how a player is gonna develop and whether he’s drafted fourth or 19th, you just don’t know.”
Gregg Popovich on Kawhi Leonard – “There wasn’t 1 moment where it was like ‘wow!’ When we traded for/drafted him, we didn’t know he was gonna be Kawhi Leonard just like we didn’t know Manu was gonna be Manu. People who tell you that are full of crap.”#Clippers #Spurs pic.twitter.com/osQr7ZhWGx
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) November 1, 2019
Prior to the Clippers-Miami Heat game on Thursday night, Erik Spoelstra was posed with the same question: Could you see this kind of explosion and growth from Leonard coming after the 2014 NBA Finals?
“I don’t know,” Spoelstra said. “Great players are great players for a reason. They’re ambitious, they get better every single year, they re-invent themselves. He’s done that year after year. That probably was a playoff run that really propelled him to stardom, Finals MVP, he really dominated and played well and had his fingerprints all over that series on both ends of the court.”
Kawhi Leonard averaged 17.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.6 steals, and 1.2 blocks per game on 61.2 percent shooting from the field during the 2014 Finals vs. the Heat. There was nothing extraordinarily flashy about his game, but he had his fingerprints all over that series, as Spoelstra noted.
His 2019 playoff run with the Raptors in which he averaged 30.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.7 steals per game on 49.0 percent shooting was nothing short of remarkable.
“What he did in Toronto was really amazing, taking over a really good team and taking them over the top to being legit contenders. I don’t even remember what I was thinking at that time, you’re just coming off of a loss, that is really all you're consumed about.”
Now a top-five player in the NBA, Kawhi Leonard will look to lead a third franchise in the Clippers to an NBA championship. So far, his squad boasts a 14-5 record, the second-best record in the NBA.
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