Holding Court – Is Kawhi Leonard the NBA’s next big star?

Paul George is a two-time All-NBA Third Team selection and two-time All-Star, being considered as one of the best two-way players in the game today. James Harden is similarly a two-time All-Star and All-NBA selection (First Team this past season), although many say he doesn’t play a lick of defense. Blake Griffin is a three-time All-NBA Second Team pick and four-time All-Star.

Tyson Chandler was once a champion and a one-time All-NBA Third Team and All-Star choice just like Damian Lillard, who may have hit the biggest shot in the 2014 playoffs when he made a game-winning, series-clinching three-pointer against Houston. Demar DeRozan, on the other hand, made the All-Star Game for the first time this past season.  

However, Kawhi Leonard, one of five non-All-Star players on an NBA squad that’s currently here to play the Gilas Pilipinas team starting tomorrow, Tuesday, July 22, could prove to be the biggest star of them all – barring unforeseen circumstances, that is – when all is said and done some 10 years from now.

Pretty audacious statement, you say?  Maybe not.

After all, Leonard, the Finals MVP this year who helped San Antonio annex a fifth title in 16 years, has a unique set of character traits and skills, plus maybe the best situation, to achieve his maximum potential as a player.

The 6-foot-7, 230-pound small forward can play with the best of them, and I mean the best, on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor. Those Frisbee-size hands of his, reportedly measured at 11.25 inches from thumb to pinkie when fully stretched (incidentally 52 percent wider than the average man’s hands) and at 9.75 inches in length, are rightfully becoming legendary simply because they’re a natural gift he uses to good advantage. Of the 293 players that have been measured at the NBA pre-draft combine since 2010, only four had hands larger than Leonard’s, which is astounding considering so many seven-foot behemoths have passed this annual ritual among draft wannabes.  

Leonard’s mother, Kim Robertson, was herself astounded when she first saw her 23-year-old son’s hands when he was born on June 29, 1991. “The first time I saw him in the delivery room I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at those hands!’”

“My hands make me a little longer, and that’s always a good thing,” Leonard said in probably a big understatement. Those hands, along with his equally phenomenal 7-foot-4 wingspan, have helped him excel on defense while scoring, rebounding and disrupting offenses by being able to reach into passing lanes for deflections or throwing an opponent off balance with a sneaky pull or grab. 

In the last NBA finals, in which Leonard matched up against what is generally considered the best player today, LeBron James, Leonard’s defense was a major factor in the Spurs’ five-game triumph. Though James shot 57.6 percent against him, the Heat superstar wasn’t always able to get his shot off or even get the ball. Nineteen percent of James’ touches against Leonard resulted in a James field goal attempt, compared to 33 percent against all other defenders. James was also held without a touch on 33 percent of the Heat’s possessions when guarded by Leonard, compared to 23 percent against all other defenders.  Leonard’s defense was still strong when he did find himself on someone other than James, with the rest of the Heat shooting just 27.8 percent (5-of-18) against him in the series.

On offense, Leonard has become a major factor himself. A 10.9-point career scorer (12.6 in the playoffs), Leonard has improved those numbers every single year since he was drafted 15^th overall out of San Diego State by Indiana in 2011 and immediately traded to the Spurs for point guard George Hill, a position of need then for the Pacers. Larry Bird must be kicking himself nowadays as that trade is increasingly becoming one of the most lopsided made in recent years. The unassuming, soft-spoken Los Angeles native has improved so much as a shooter that he is now a legitimate three-point threat. Of course, he has always been able to score on drives and soaring put-backs. 

“Everything, his length, his foot speed, his intuition, indicated that he could be a great defender (in the NBA),” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich says. “And that happened right away. What’s surprised me is how quickly he’s picked things up on the offensive end, things like the runner and the three-point shot. He’s learned more quickly than almost anybody I’ve ever had and become a better offensive player much quicker than I expected.”

In the last finals, for example, Leonard was just cruising so quietly and unobtrusively in the first two games, scoring a total of nine points while perhaps figuring out his trio of veteran teammates, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, could do the job of leading the offense. After being called aside by Popovich and his trio of teammates, however, Leonard suddenly rose to dominate the rest of the series, averaging 23.7 points and 9.3 rebounds in the final three games, which the Spurs, not coincidentally, won by an average of 19 points.  

Leonard as a result became only the fourth player in finals history to score at least 20 points in three consecutive games before turning 23 years old, joining Phoenix’s Alvan Adams who did it in four games in 1976, Cleveland’s LeBron James (2007, three games) and Boston’s Tom Heinsohn (1957, three games). In the 104-87 Game 5 clincher, he had 22 and 10 rebounds to complete the hat trick. For the series, Leonard averaged 17.8 points on 61 percent shooting (58 percent from beyond the arc) and 6.4 rebounds.

“I just talked to him about not being in that deferment or that defer sort of stage. The hell with Tony, the hell with Timmy, the hell with Manu, you play the game. You are the man. You’re part of the engine that makes us go,” Pop recalls telling his budding star.

Leonard thus went on to become the third-youngest Finals MVP awardee since it was first handed out in 1969. Only Magic Johnson, who won it the first two times in 1980 and 1982 at age 20 and 22, was younger, while Duncan is the fourth-youngest now after winning it two months after turning 23 in 1999.  Leonard also became the sixth player to win Finals MVP honors in a season in which he was not named to an All-Star team, joining New York’s Willis Reed who did it in 1973, Washington’s Wes Unseld (1978), Boston’s Cedric Maxwell (1981), and Detroit’s Joe Dumars and Chauncey Billups (1989 and 2004, respectively).

Leonard did seem destined to become the player that he’s turning out to be. Not heavily recruited by any major college program, Leonard nonetheless possessed a seemingly unobtrusive but highly efficient game, showing it earlier in high school when he led his Martin Luther King High team in Riverside, California to the Southern Section Division I-AA championship as an 18-year-old, tallying 11 points, 20 rebounds, six blocks and three steals en route to senior averages of 22.6 points, 13.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 3.0 blocks per game. He was named California Mr. Basketball that year and, together with Chicago’s 2013 first-rounder Tony Snell, led the Wolves to a 30-3 record and a No. 7 national ranking.

But something happened just as he was about to embark on his freshman year at San Diego State: his father Mark, the man who taught him how to play the game and the dominant figure in his life, was murdered, having been fatally shot as he was working on the night of January 18, 2008 at the Compton car wash he owned. The murderer has still not been identified.

That major incident still hangs like a dark cloud over Kawhi’s life, even as he became a Second Team All-American as a sophomore after leading the 34-3 Aztecs to a second straight NCAA tournament with norms of 15.5 points and 10.6 rebounds and into the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual champion Connecticut, then led by Kemba Walker. This was enough reason for his mother to have been constantly at his side since he was acquired by the Spurs in that 2011 draft-day trade. Mrs. Robertson simply wanted to be there in case her son needed somebody to talk, cry or maybe vent.

“I really didn’t see Kawhi suffer from it (his dad’s murder). I wanted him to. I would say, ‘Kawhi, you OK? You OK?’ But I think he just kept it in,” Kim said. “I was kind of scared. You know how young men, they lose their father, who is a big figure in their life. It might turn them to do things bad. But Kawhi’s always been strong.  He’s a good kid.  He wants to get better and better.”

Of course he has, and the ceiling is unlimited barring injuries or any such circumstances. When he was handed the Bill Russell Trophy symbolic of the Finals MVP on Father’s Day by none other than Russell himself, Leonard was understandably emotional.

“It’s a very special meaning for me, knowing that he’s gone and I was able to win a championship on Father’s Day,” he said. “But I mean, I’m just happy just winning the championship. Like I told you all, my dad died six years ago, and I really wasn’t thinking about him that much.”

Of course he was, with both Mark and Kawhi having been very close and often going together at the car wash. Mark, in fact, was trying to get off his work in time on the night he was murdered to watch his son’s game that night. And though Kawhi doesn’t talk much about his dad – heck, he doesn’t talk much about anything else, earning him the reputation as the quietest Spur in history, surpassing even previous titleholder Duncan – Mark was always there lingering in his son’s mind.  

“From the moment it (the killing) happened, he wanted to make his dad proud,” Mrs. Robertson said.  “He wanted to keep on moving and moving and moving.”

And the game’s best coach, Popovich, is just ready to bring him along the way in this journey. “I think he’s going to be a star. And as time goes on, he’ll be the face of the Spurs, I think.  At both ends of the court, he is really a special player,” Pop says. “And what makes me be so confident about him is that he wants it so badly. He wants to be a good player, I mean a great player. He comes early, he stays late, and he’s coachable, he’s just like a sponge…  Going forward, it’s my responsibility to get him more and more involved. As our veterans get older, he’s going to be a guy that we go to more and more.”

Popovich intends to get the ball more often to Leonard in the post, believing that his pupil is strong and agile enough to attract double teams down the block. More isolation and off-screen plays will be given to Leonard, too, as he continues to become more comfortable assuming a greater part of the Spurs’ offense, and Pop is confident he’ll be a premier scorer in the mold of his veteran Big Three teammates.

“He’s a great learner and he’s super competitive, has a drive to be the best that’s really uncommon in our league,” Pop says. “He walks the walk.” 

“I want to be one of the best players in the NBA,” Leonard says in a rare display of chutzpah. “All the things you have to do to be great – regular-season MVPs, Finals MVPs – those are the things I want to accomplish. Those are the goals that I have. I’m not looking up to nobody. I don’t want to be like nobody.  I’m just trying to get better.”

With a personality like that, who’s going to bet against Kawhi Leonard?

SHORTSHOTS: San Antonio has hired European coaching legend Ettore Messina as an assistant to Gregg Popovich.  Messina comes to San Antonio from Russia, where he coached European power CSKA Moscow. He is a two-time Euroleague Coach of the Year and has also coached in Italy and Spain.  He served as a coaching consultant for the LA Lakers in 2011-12… ESPN has reported that the official contract Carmelo Anthony signed with New York is worth a total of $124,064,681. This is broken down as follows: $22,458,401 for the first year, $22,875,000 (second), $24,559,380 (third), $26,243,760 (fourth), and $27,928,140 (fifth)… Charlotte and Lance Stephenson have agreed to a three-year, $27 million deal. What was Stephenson thinking in refusing an $8.8 million-a-year, five-year extension with Indiana to sign that deal with the Hornets with the third year being a team option? Unless Stephenson is quite sure he’ll be a transcendent star by the time a new collective bargaining agreement kicks in, that’s a bad decision… Free-agent forward Rashard Lewis, formerly of Miami, has agreed to a one-year deal with Dallas, according to his agent Colin Bryant… Washington and Boston have completed a sign-and-trade for Kris Humphries, with the Celtics getting a $4.3 million trade exception and a protected second-round pick. The three-year, $13 million deal Humphries signed with the Wizards is a coup for them, as the final year of the contract is not fully guaranteed, giving the team direct ability to end the deal by 2016. After earlier signing former Celtic great Paul Pierce to a two-year, $11 million deal and acquiring frontliners DeJuan Blair and Trevor Booker, some perceive Washington is on a roll.  The Celtics have also re-signed guard Avery Bradley to a reported four-year, $32 million extension and have guaranteed the 2014-15 contract of guard Phil Pressey. “We see Avery as a key part of our chase of Banner 18,” said Celtics president Danny Ainge.  “He keeps getting better and is still far from reaching his ceiling.  We’re ecstatic to have him back.”… Dirk Nowitzki, it turns out, has taken a bigger pay cut than previously thought. The deal was actually finalized at three years and $25 million for the Mavs lifer, a bargain for the production the seven-foot sharpshooter is still churning out… Mike Miller has agreed on a two-year, $5.5 million deal with Cleveland, with a player option for the second year.  Miller wanted more money than the Cavs could offer but eventually made it work.  Two of LeBron James’ sharpshooting buddies in Miami are joining him in Cleveland as James Jones also agreed to one-year deal with the Cavs at the league minimum. The Heat will actually give their first-round pick next year to the Cavs as a result of the LeBron trade in 2010 (yes, that was a trade) and are paying Miller (amnesty) in effect to play with James now. Talk about adding insult to injury. – Rappler.com

 

Bert A. Ramirez has been a freelance sportswriter/columnist since the ’80s, writing mostly about the NBA and once serving as consultant and editor for Tower Sports Magazine, the longest-running locally published NBA magazine, from 1999 to 2008.  He has also written columns and articles for such publications as Malaya, Sports Digest, Winners Sports Weekly, Pro Guide, Sports Weekly, Sports Flash, Sports World, Basketball Weekly and the FIBA’s International Basketball, and currently writes a fortnightly column for QC Life and a weekly blog for BostonSports Desk.  A former corporate manager, Bert has breathed, drunk and slept sports most of his life.