Toronto Raptors facing true test of Kawhi Leonard experiment against Philadelphia 76ers
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Sunday 5 May 2019 20:35, UK
The Toronto Raptors' experiment to acquire Kawhi Leonard for one guaranteed season faces its truest test against in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semi-final against the Philadelphia 76ers, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
Live NBA: Toronto @ Philadelphia
The Toronto Raptors traded for Kawhi Leonard from the San Antonio Spurs this past summer knowing that they may only be doing so as a rental.
Leonard is in the final year of his contract - a below-market-value player option for the 2019/20 season will go unexercised, something Toronto knew in advance - and in a fairly polarised free agency market in which a lot of teams will fight over a few stars, there will be plenty of suitors for his services this summer.
Indeed, teams have been planning for this free agency opportunity from some years out. The Raptors could do nothing to prevent his free agency, and so while they hoped they could recruit him internally and convince him to stay in their one season together much as the Oklahoma City Thunder had done previously with Paul George, they had absolutely no surety about that.
They also traded for him knowing that significant health concerns abounded. Leonard, a player who had never managed more than 74 games in any of the seven previous seasons of his career, had managed only nine games in the 2017-18 season due to a prolonged a quad injury, further aggravated by shoulder and ankle problems.
The ugly cloud of the nature of his departure from the Spurs - refusing to play despite health clearance from the team's doctors, not even joining the team on the bench during their playoff run and eventually demanding to be traded via intermediaries - was also not lost on prospective trade partners. Inasmuch as trading for NBA superstar players can ever be risky, trading for Leonard was a big gamble for the Raptors.
Knowing the above, the Raptors treated Leonard like a porcelain figurine. While there were a few absences due to personal reasons and minor ailments, the main reason Leonard appeared in only 60 regular season games this season was due to the extensive amount of rest (or, to give it its new en vogue title, "load management") that the team gave him.
Rightly concluding that the team would be good enough to get a high playoff seed without needing to overwork their superstar, Toronto opted to preserve their historically fragile player for a deep playoff run; armed currently with the best team in franchise history; Toronto's genuine title contention need not be inhibited by the pursuit of a regular season record.
It has worked. With his play this season, Leonard has re-established himself as one of the best two-way superstars in the world, if not the very best. On account of its obviousness, glamour and measurability, superstars are normally defined by their offensive games, yet Kawhi is as much of a deterrent on the defensive end as he is a machine on the offensive one.
'Deterrence' is the best word for Kawhi's defense. You will not see him lock down opponents as much as you would usually need or expect to see a potential Defensive Player of the Year do, particularly a perimeter-orientated one, simply because opponents do their absolute best to avoid match-ups with him.
The world of advanced statistics has yet to pass metrics into the mainstream that adequately measure the impact of a player's defensive ability and presence, and those that do exist do not flatter Leonard as much as may be assumed. But these metrics can measure only what does happen. They cannot measure what doesn't happen; the ball denials, the traps, the sheer avoidance practiced because of him, the clutch defensive isolation possessions when it matters the most.
'Machine' is perhaps the best world for Kawhi's offense, too. Leonard quickly burned off some mild November rust and ended up having a career-best season offensively, averaging 26.6 points per game on a .606 shooting percentage. Only six players scored more points per game than that this season, and of those six, only three (Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden and Steph Curry) did so more efficiently.
Even the casual fan will notice that that is a list of three MVPs right there. And only Giannis also provides the same top-tier defensive deterrence that Kawhi does. That is quite some company to keep. And the mechanical way in which Leonard does it is in itself Kevin Durant-like; after all, when did you last see Kawhi Leonard take a bad shot?
Leonard brings to the team not only talent, but experience. Although he did not play in last year's run, Kawhi had been in the playoffs in every season of his career to date, including winning an NBA title back in 2014, a series in which he also won the prestigious Finals MVP award.
The Raptors team he joined had gagged away its own playoff runs in each of the previous five seasons, losing three times in a row to LeBron James's Cleveland Cavaliers, the last two of which had been in conference semi-final sweeps. Five consecutive seasons of 48 wins or more, including an Eastern Conference-leading 59 wins last season, meant nothing unless it could be converted into some actual postseason progression.
With LeBron finally moving out West, the door was open for a contender of Toronto's calibre if they could make the moves to capitalise on all the match-up potential their tremendous depth of talent offered, and added a true superstar to lead the team and stave off the playoff yips.
Leonard was a risk to acquire, but in theory, he was a perfect fit. Indeed, a player of his type and his calibre could be a perfect fit. Yet Toronto may have been a particularly perfect fit; the dour, deliberate outcast Leonard uniting with the NBA's sole Canadian team, uniting in their outsider status, with expectations hugely tempered by years of playoff frustration, a strong cast of complementary talents and no one to fight for alpha status.
For the most part, it has worked. Surprising Game 1 loss aside, the Raptors easily beat the Orlando Magic in five games to once again make it back to the Conference semi-finals, where this time they face the Philadelphia 76ers.
Heading into Game 4, the Raptors trail 2-1 in the series. Having averaged 40 points over the first two games, as well as scoring 35 of his team's mere 89 in Game 2, Kawhi is doing his bit despite a good defensive effort on him by Ben Simmons.
The Raptors cannot afford to fall 3-1 behind thus, Game 4 will be the true test of the Leonard experiment. The Raptors have their best team in franchise history, on paper, and coasted to 58 wins this season in such a way that brought about genuine NBA Finals chatter.
The bugbear of LeBron has gone, and although the Milwaukee Bucks have filled that void, they too have their own questions about playoff experience to answer.
With a stoic, unflappable leader seemingly untroubled by everything, they have the right personality to challenge their own recent history, to be the man who does not flinch in flinchable moments, and to be the elite two-way superstar the team has never before had.
Even with Milwaukee still to come, the door is at least open right now.
And if they cannot walk through it, then for Kawhi, the Los Angeles Clippers are waiting in the wings.
