Kawhi Leonard has had a rough few months. His tenure with the Los Angeles Clippers hasn't been sunshine and lollipops so far, and this offseason uncorked the mother-of-all contract scandals with a disciplinary ruling still looming. But through all the noise and bad energy, Leonard is somehow having the best season of his career.
Leonard absolutely eviscerated the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, scoring 45 points in 32 minutes (hello) and was a game-high plus-41 (bro). He was completely dominant, teleporting into passing lanes, scoring at all three levels and just … looking a bit disappointed in how much better he was than everyone else out there. While that game might be more of an indictment of the Timberwolves than it was a Clippers party, these flashes of oh-my-god-he’s-just-better-than-everyone-else have happened before; I will never forget when the Clippers came to Boston and kicked the crap out of my eventual-champion Boston Celtics on January 27, 2024, by far the worst loss they suffered all season. It was legitimately shocking.
Kawhi Leonard has looked like his 2019 self again
We all knew this was possible. In fact, we've all known this was possible. Here's a real anecdote to explain Leonard's place in NBA superstardom, beginning with a quote from one of my college roommates: “When Kawhi is healthy, he’s top five no matter what … I’m just saying!”
The year is 2022-2023 — yes, that’s two years, but one basketball year. Everyone (in my college friend group) is trying to figure out if Jayson Tatum is a top-five player in the NBA. The list includes three unimpeachables: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid (that year’s MVP). Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jayson Tatum, and Luka Doncic are circling for the fourth and fifth spots. Despite it making significantly more sense just to discuss the “top six,” considering there is a clear… top six, we’re not doing that.
One of my friends is adamant that Kawhi Leonard should be discussed “when healthy.” Right, we say, having noticed that Leonard missed the entire previous season and pivotal playoff games for the Clippers that year. The Kawhi experience was at an all-time low. Stocks were plummeting. His two contract extensions with the Clippers will go down in history as calamities. There will be no redemption, no salvation. We shall cherish the 2019 run until the sun sets.
Leonard is one of the NBA's premier dominators ... when healthy
But maybe my friend was right. Apparently, nobody told Leonard the Clippers were in rebuild mode. He has clawed his team from 15 games below .500 to 33-32, the first team ever to overcome that big of a hole and get back ahead of the sticks. He is averaging a career-high in points per game and true shooting percentage, and, despite a marginal dip in three-point shooting, is still a menace defensively and on pace to play more than 60 games in a season for the first time since 2016-17. That was, uh, nine years ago.
That has been the great tragedy of Leonard’s career, one of the stranger ones among NBA superstars. Everyone knows he’s capable of this level; history may forget this fact, but Leonard was widely regarded as the best player in the world after carrying the Toronto Raptors to the 2019 Championship. His signing with the Clippers was seismic, and for all of 10 seconds, it felt like a paradigm shift in NBA history. Would the Clippers grab the Los Angeles basketball belt from the Lakers? Would Kawhi and Paul George finally save one of the tragic franchi—nope. It’s basically been sadness and suffering and a single Conference Finals.
There have been constant injuries and questions about his accountability, but through it all was a kind of overriding sadness about what could have been. Nobody wants to hate Kawhi, one of the great out-of-nowhere superstars of the last 20 years. He was a Finals MVP and a Defensive Player of the Year before he was even an All-Star. His team entered this year with a lot of questions, began this year with some pretty shocking answers and then traded James Harden and Ivica Zubac. It was not supposed to be going well.
This season offers the Kawhi-era Clippers a chance at redemption
But this awesome Kawhi-and-Clippers season has been an anti-tanking tour de force. In a year when it feels like half the league has no interest in winning, the Clippers owe their first-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder. In any other alternate reality, the Clippers would be tanking right now. But they can’t, and so they tried to salvage some dignity.
Leonard leading that effort is a spectacular irony, in a season that was supposed to be the final repudiation of the Kawhi era. He will be an expiring contract next year, and the Clippers extending him again feels like it would tempt some sort of fate that shouldn’t be messed with. Still, someone (Clippers or not) will talk themselves into the 35-year-old “Claw”, whose nickname should really be “Top Five When Healthy.”
The Clippers are mortal-locked into the Play-In this year, and picking them to actually win the West would be some kind of crazy with the Thunder and Spurs wreaking havoc everywhere. But it’s a feel-good story for a player we’ve all desperately wanted to just play and play well for seven torturous Clippers years. If nothing else, we’re (currently) getting that. And perhaps a massive financial/strategic/contractual penalty because of the aspiration scandal. But we will also get the first thing. Small victories.