The Exquisite Physics of Kawhi Leonard and the Gravity of the N.B.A. Finals
By
Louisa Thomas
May 30, 2019
Kawhi Leonard, of the Toronto Raptors, doesn’t defy the rules of physics; he understands them.
Photograph by Gregory Shamus / Getty
There’s a moment from the N.B.A. Eastern Conference Finals that I can’t stop thinking about. With just under two minutes remaining in Game Five, and the Toronto Raptors leading the Milwaukee Bucks, 96–95,
Kawhi Leonard let fly a three-point shot that bounced off the rim. As Leonard’s teammate Marc Gasol got his long limbs tangled with those of the Bucks star
Giannis Antetokounmpo under the basket, fighting for the rebound, Leonard slipped in behind both of them and grabbed the ball. Antetokounmpo then lunged desperately toward Leonard and pushed him out of bounds, committing a foul. When he realized what had happened, Antetokounmpo—the league’s likely M.V.P., a player so talented that he seems poised to transform the N.B.A.—doubled over in frustration.
For the Bucks, it was one of several lapses at crucial moments, an illustration of how a team that dominated the regular season and went up two games to none against the Raptors could lose its final four games, and so the series. (Until then, the Bucks had not lost more than two games in a row all year.) For Leonard, on the other hand, it was not an especially dramatic example of the
historic level of play that he has maintained throughout the playoffs. In that game alone, he scored thirty-five points and had nine assists, meaning that sixty-two of Toronto’s hundred and five points flowed through his massive hands. In addition to dominating offensively, Leonard slowed down the unstoppable Antetokounmpo. A missed shot and a messy rebound were hardly a grand highlight for him.
But I am still hung up on it, a week later, because it had the quality of a magic trick—in one instant, Leonard was standing behind the three-point line; in the next, he had materialized under the basket—and yet it didn’t require any supernatural feat at all. Even though every single person in the building knew that Leonard was the one Raptor who had to be contained, no matter the cost, the Bucks failed to keep track of him. Later, I watched the rebound over and over, baffled. Leonard hardly seemed to hurry, and in front of him the court was clear. He has not been unappreciated or underestimated; these days, he’s often compared to Michael Jordan. And yet there he was, at a critical moment, doing his job, and making it look like the simplest thing in the world.
It’s a little odd, the way that people sometimes talk about Leonard. The N.B.A. is a league of superstars, men who shape the action around them not only on the court but off of it, too. Leonard, in contrast to his fellow-greats, is often described in a way that makes him seem passive. He is not in motion as often as he is
in the right place. He is not dictating the game but executing the correct action. He is not a basketball genius but
a robot who was programmed by one.
Some of this, I think, is rooted in discomfort. We are used to feeling like we
know our superstars, even if we have little clue about who they really are. They give interviews and post things on Instagram. They tweet. Leonard doesn’t tweet—not since 2015, anyway, and only four times in all. He avoids talking to the media as much as possible. Last season, he played only nine games for his former team, the San Antonio Spurs, while nursing a quadriceps injury and demanding a trade. Why? Was he disloyal? Was he in pain? What does he want?
Where is he going? We still can only speculate. Easier, then, to think of him as a machine than as a mystery.
On the court, he really is in the right place almost all the time: he has a sense for how the game is moving and the strength to control it, though he tends not to be ostentatious about this. He does make good decisions, over and over, the kind of small computations that let him make a solid play and prevent the need for a spectacular one. Loving a player like Antetokounmpo means marvelling at excess: the physical prowess, the agility and acceleration. Antetokounmpo can play any position. He can even seem to defy physics—to hang in the air, to slip through men and around them, to curl and crash on the rim. Appreciating Leonard means celebrating economy, efficiency. Leonard doesn’t defy the rules of physics; he understands them. He moves along the most direct routes and recognizes when space will cease to be occupied. He calmly recalibrates the arc of his shot, even when time is short and the stakes are
at their highest.
In the Finals, Leonard and the Raptors will face the Golden State Warriors. Golden State, at least for the start of the series, will be without
Kevin Durant, who, before he went down with a calf injury, was probably the only player performing as well as Leonard in this postseason. And so, for now, the Warriors will rely on their other superstar, the irrepressible
Stephen Curry, whose jump shots defy gravity in the way that some players’ legs seem to do. Leonard will once again be the quiet one, unsmiling, a black box on the basketball court. The N.B.A. has changed since the Warriors took it over a few years ago. But basic physics and geometry have not, however much certain players make us wonder. Leonard will be counting on that.
https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sp...whi-leonard-and-the-gravity-of-the-nba-finals
