A Complete List Of People And Things That Make Kawhi Leonard Smile


Kawhi Leonard is the NBA’s quietest superstar, following in the footsteps of his predecessor in San Antonio, Tim Duncan. It has been a Spurs tradition, either purposefully or coincidentally, for more than a decade that their star player be a fundamentally sound, extraordinarily good player on the court and a very private person off of it.

The biggest difference between Duncan and Leonard is in their demeanor off the floor. Duncan, while a private person, is known as a funny guy who loves to pull pranks and joke on his friends and teammates. Leonard is, well, quiet, even to those he’s closer to. This makes him something of an enigma. He’s a superstar level NBA player that prefers to go about his day as if he’s just an anonymous person living in San Antonio. It’s one of the things that makes some have hesitation when determining whether he’s truly a superstar.

Fans like to have the chance to humanize the players they watch dominated in sports. We want to know something about what makes these superior athletes more like us. What music do they like? What TV shows do they watch? What do they do off of the court or field for fun? We know the answers to those questions for most people, but that remains a bit of a mystery with regards to Kawhi Leonard.

ESPN recently did a video bit asking his teammates (and Leonard himself) what makes him laugh. The answers Leonard gave were very generic. He lists “TV shows, funny movies, and jokes” which are the kinds of answers you’d give if you wanted people to think you weren’t a robot and enjoyed all of the things other people like.

However, over the weekend, we got a brief peek behind that curtain and learned some things about what he does for entertainment in a rare glimpse at Kawhi out in the wild, courtesy of the great and legendary 2 Chainz. Not only was a 2 Chainz performance enough to get Kawhi Leonard out in public, but it made him smile on camera, which is an extreme rarity. This made me wonder, what are other things that make Kawhi smile, and I put together as complete a list as I could based off of everything we know about the Spurs’ star — I kid you not in over 1,300 images of Kawhi on Getty, I found less than 10 of him smiling.

2 Chainz

Here’s the thing, it’s impossible to not like 2 Chainz. He’s on an unforgettable run of putting out incredible music and has not missed on a project or guest verse in years. Even Kawhi is not impervious to the power of Tity 2 Necklace, and he can’t help but be excited to be hanging out with Mr. Chainz.

Wingstop and Couponing

This isn’t a joke, Kawhi Leonard loves his coupons and Wingstop’s Mango Habanero wings. We learned this through a tremendous profile of him from a year ago by Sports Illustrated‘s Lee Jenkins, who explained that Leonard, despite his $94 million deal, has to have his coupons or else he freaks out.

He is happy to sponsor Wingstop, which sends him coupons for free wings, so he can feed his Mango Habanero addiction. This winter, after his $94 million contract kicked in, he panicked when he lost his coupons. Wingstop generously replenished his supply.

Let’s be honest here, who among us doesn’t love getting a deal on some wings?

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Grizzlies coach David Fizdale

If you look closely you’ll see a smile from Leonard in this picture. The Spurs had just won this game so maybe it’s just winning that has him feeling happy, but there are lots of games the Spurs win and you don’t get this kind of reaction, so I’m going to assume it’s Fiz. Take that for data.

Tim Duncan’s Dad Jokes

As mentioned earlier, Duncan likes to tell jokes and based off what we know about Duncan I can only assume some of them are bad dad jokes and I bet Kawhi loves them. I don’t have anything to back me up on this, I just prefer to believe it as true.

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Being Drafted or David Stern

You’d assume it’s being drafted into the NBA, but you never know. Maybe he was a big Stern fan and was excited to meet the commish.

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Winning the NBA Finals or Being touched on the head by many people

Again, you’d assume this one is because he just won the NBA Finals and the Finals MVP award, but maybe he just really enjoys being patted on the head.

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Basketball hoops or Ladders or Scissors or Winning the Mountain West title

I would believe any of these. Maybe Kawhi really likes cutting things with scissors. There’s something cathartic about a clean cut of something and that snip sound or maybe he likes being up a ladder. It’s probably winning the title — there’s evidence to suggest this — or, an this is also just as plausible, maybe he really likes basketball hoops and being this close to one makes him smile.

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Pep Rallies or That Hat

That’s the same hat he was wearing before so maybe he just really likes that hat. He also could be really into pep rallies or Marco Belinelli told him a very good joke right before this.

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