This shouldn’t be shocking to anyone paying special attention. But context still renders Kawhi Leonard’s offensive performance over the first few weeks of 2015-16 overlooked on the league-wide scale.
After his unassuming youngster dropped an easy 32 points on 13-of-22 shooting against the Oklahoma City Thunder during the season opener, Gregg Popovich anointed Leonard’s “arrival” as a superstar. That bucked conventional public wisdom from multiple perspectives, most obvious of which were the San Antonio Spurs coach singling out an individual and the 24-year-old supposedly establishing himself as his veteran team’s alpha dog.
Was he really ready to make the leap after a season of relatively pedestrian per-game numbers? And would the addition of LaMarcus Aldridge allow him to take the reins of San Antonio’s offense the way Popovich seemed to be suggesting?
All Leonard has done in the interim is ensure his coach’s glowing early appraisal came up something short of eventual reality. Nearly a month into 2015-16, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year has become nearly as dominant offensively as he is on the other end of the floor.
The raw statistics are impressive: 21.5 points per game on 51.1 percent shooting overall and 45.1 from beyond the arc put Leonard in an exclusive club of stellar production and efficiency. Nevertheless, they still don’t tell the whole story of his development into one of the most varied and effective players in basketball.
Leonard’s shot chart through the Spurs’ first 14 games is an exercise in über-efficient versatility. He’s as proficient at the rim as he is from above the break of the arc, and supplements that rare amalgam with an in-between comfort that belies the expected worth of two-point jumpers, too.
Just how has is the impossibly long-limbed and well-balanced wing doing all this damage to such an effortless effect? By scoring and playmaking in most every means imaginable.
Leonard’s effective field goal percentage on catch-and-shoot opportunities is 57.0, which is just 2.6 points less than his adjusted accuracy on spot-up attempts. Player tracking data ranks him well above-average as a pick-and-roll ballhandler, isolation playmaker, and post-up hub. And of course, he still ranks as one of the most devastating transition beasts in all of basketball.
Even the most ardent fans of Leonard’s game surely didn’t see this much improvement coming. Well, at least not so quickly and precipitously. It’s long seemed a matter of time until he became elite in one or more offensive facets of the game. What makes his play in this young season so noteworthy is that he’s made multiple strides simultaneously, emerging as one of the league’s most well-rounded players in the process – on the side of the ball at which he’s still “least” valuable.
The MVP conversation, for now, begins and ends with Stephen Curry. He’s earned that distinction with eye-popping play of his own and the Golden State Warriors’ historic team success. But when the defending champions inevitably stumble on their road to a title defense, pundits will look elsewhere for a player worthy of basketball’s highest individual honor. And if Leonard’s subtly relentless improvement continues, San Antonio’s new superstar will finally receive the national due he’s warranted for years – and has never deserved more than now.
