Kawhi Leonard for MVP
Basketball is a 94 foot game, and the MVP should be the player who makes the biggest impact on both ends of the court.
NBA Champion. Finals MVP. NBA All Star. First Team All NBA. Defensive Player of the Year.
The only players who have have achieved these accolades are former Washington Wizards sixth man Michael Jeffrey Jordan and legendary Toronto Raptor Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon.
Oh, and also Kawhi Anthony Leonard.
What is soon to be in common with these three? Most Valuable Player award.
Kawhi Leonard is having his best season to date with the San Antonio Spurs. He is averaging career highs in minutes, points, three point attempts, free throw percentage and attempts, and assists. He is 2nd in PER behind only Russell Westbrook. Even though Leonard is averaging near 50/40/90 numbers on the second ranked team in the league, the most compelling arguments for him are fairly qualitative in nature.
This career-best season is coming off the retirement of future Hall of Famer and All-NBA sullen individual Tim Duncan.
The Spurs are also in the midst of the sharp decline of aging stars Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker.
Kawhi is taking the majority of the offensive load with the help of veteran supporting pieces Patty Mills, LaMarcus Aldridge and former crash test dummy Pau Gasol. While Kawhi carries this burden on offence, he is still managing to maintain the top tier perimeter defence that won him back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year awards.
Leonard stands apart from his contemporaries on the defensive end. This is something that most experts around the league will agree with, despite certain metrics suggesting that the Spurs are better defensively when Kawhi is on the bench. This discrepancy is likely a result of the lack of reliable advanced defensive stats for wing defenders. This leaves us to rely on what we see.
And what we see is pretty tasty.
This sequence in a win against the Rockets catapulted Kawhi into the media’s MVP narrative, which relies on signature moments and gaudy stats.
Despite him putting up All-NBA level offensive numbers while also guarding the other team’s best perimeter player at an All-NBA defensive level, it is unlikely Kawhi will win the MVP this year because of the attention that is being given to alleged human being Russell Westbrook and Metta World Peace Aggravated Assault victim James Harden.
If not this year, Kawhi will eventually win an MVP Award, if not multiple awards. In any conversation regarding two way basketball players, there’s no one better and more consistent than Kawhi Leonard.
The scary part: he still hasn’t reached his peak.
Austin is theocho.ca’s main golf contributor. He also writes about basketball and guest hosts The Ocho podcast with his brother Riley when Aaron has something better to do. Follow Austin on Twitter at @austevans24, and check out jolo golf on Facebook .
