Kawhi Leonard is lastly wholesome sufficient for us to correctly respect his greatness

Forgive the plight of the weary sportswriter, however writing about Kawhi Leonard is troublesome. There’s hardly ever an apparent story when he goes full-Terminator on some unsuspecting playoff opponent.

The primary query after any legendary efficiency is “how did he do it?” The reply is all the time the identical for Leonard. He took round 20 heavily-contested photographs and all of them went in. Of Leonard’s 19 shot makes an attempt towards the Nuggets on Monday, just one got here within the restricted space. The opposite 18 have been jumpers, and 14 of them went in. There’s not an aesthetic high quality to these photographs that invitations flowery language. This is not Kyrie Irving or Stephen Curry defying the boundaries of the human physique with their heaves or contortions. Leonard is so impeccably balanced and exact in his motions that all of it seems simple even when it clearly is not. When the video games begin to matter, it largely simply feels as if he is toggled the online game sliders as far in his favor as attainable.

His persona has by no means leant itself to the kind of mythology and hero worship we search for in our superstars both. He wasn’t on the duvet of Sports activities Illustrated at 16 with the headline “The Chosen One” like LeBron James. He is not chasing the ghost of Michael Jordan like Kobe Bryant did. Basketball is an exceedingly narrative-driven sport. This is not soccer the place faces are hidden behind helmets. Gamers are remembered as characters within the story of the league. Discovering Leonard’s place in that tapestry has by no means been easy.

Say you wish to play the all-time rating sport. What on Earth do you do with a participant whose peak was primarily “Kobe Bryant however larger and extra environment friendly,” however by way of his age-33 season has been outscored within the NBA by Antoine Walker? Leonard has been one of the best participant on two completely different championship groups. He may add a 3rd in June. But he is been wholesome sufficient to complete solely two of his final seven postseasons, with one other season missed solely tossed into that blend for good measure.

If there is a narrative thread for us to comply with right here, it is most likely health-related. We have seen accidents destroy legendary careers earlier than. The Ringer’s Raheem Palmer known as him the NBA’s Terrell Davis, a working again whose peak matches and maybe even exceeds these of contemporaries like Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders, however who solely performed 4 wholesome seasons. Davis, like Leonard, was a two-time champion.

The pure NBA comparability can be Invoice Walton, and there is one thing traditionally gratifying about the way in which that is ending right here. Walton by no means bounced again from his accidents, save one memorable bench season with the Celtics. However Leonard has. This is not a facsimile of his greatest self. He is not reaching and straining for one final dance like many different ageing legends have. The model of Leonard that scored 39 towards the Nuggets on Monday was no completely different than his 2019 self. An all-time legend we thought could be misplaced simply picked up the place he left off a number of years in the past. It is virtually as if Leonard is what Walton might’ve been with 40 years of advances in medical science. No less than one of many two greatest basketball gamers that San Diego ever produced is getting his comfortable ending.

For another night time at the least, Leonard was on the heart of the basketball world. If he retains enjoying like this, he might have fairly a number of extra forward. It feels thematically applicable, at the least within the context of the final yr or so in basketball historical past. Return to the Olympics. Group USA received a gold medal with James, Curry and Kevin Durant, the three commonplace bearers of this period, main the way in which. It felt, within the second, like the tip of one thing. Curry’s group had simply missed the 2024 playoffs. James and Durant have been each bounced within the first spherical. It appeared, in that second, as if the three of them could be executed contending for championships, and willingly or not, compelled handy the reins of the league over to the subsequent technology.

The season that adopted has been one in all rejuvenation. Durant’s Suns fell to the lottery, however James and Curry are proper again within the thick of the championship hunt due to mid-season blockbusters. Leonard did not get a splashy new teammate. His group let the co-star he as soon as recruited, Paul George, stroll for nothing final summer season. But right here he’s, in the identical place as James and Curry, preventing for a similar trophy, and arguably outplaying each of them.

James and Curry are one facet of the bracket. Leonard is on the opposite, buying and selling haymakers with Nikola Jokić, winner of three of the previous 4 MVP trophies. If he beats the consensus greatest participant on the planet three extra occasions out of 5, he escapes that figurative Thunderdome in Denver solely to trade it for a literal one in Oklahoma Metropolis, the place the 68-win Thunder are virtually actually awaiting him. It is a becoming subsequent cease on the Leonard revenge tour. First he takes on the group that overcame a 3-1 result in beat him within the Orlando bubble, subsequent he’d face the budding dynasty constructed on the George commerce he compelled the Clippers to make.

How far he’ll be capable to take this, solely time will inform. But when the previous few years had actually been it for Leonard, the accidents would have wound up defining his profession traditionally. As a substitute, he will get one other probability to jot down the story we’re struggling to inform, to face as much as one of the best gamers of his day and say that even when he did not final fairly so long as they did, he was each bit nearly as good. He is overwhelmed James, Durant and Curry within the playoffs earlier than. On Monday, he began sizing Jokić’s head up for his mantle as nicely, and whether or not or not he in the end beats him, that he is even going through him as an equal at this level represents a legacy that so far has gone sorely underappreciated.