After my few days of deliberation, I decided that Kawhi Leonard would be my player to watch. He averaged 12 points on 49.4% shooting with 6 rebounds and a couple of assists and steals per game in the 2012-2013 campaign, so he wasn't completely under the radar. However, he would have the Herculean task of guarding unanimous-except-for-one-Melo-vote MVP LeBron James. His success or failure in this role would, of course, have a big impact on which team stood victorious at the end of the series. I also chose to follow Kawhi because (1) his name is Kawhi and (2) his braids hypnotized me in to it.
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| Legendary. |
The Spurs lost, but Kawhi played well enough to make me look like I knew what I was talking about. He averaged a double-double in the Finals (14.6 points and 11.1 rebounds), and held James to under 45% shooting in a year that he shot 56.5% from the field. So, naturally, Kawhi was once again my player to watch for this year's Finals. And boy, for two games, did I look stupid. James scored 23 in the three quarters he played in Game 1, and went off for 35 in Miami's Game 2 win. On the other end, Kawhi wasn't much better: he had 9 points in both games, which is actually surprisingly high given the deep foul trouble he always seemed to be in. Once he committed his fourth foul with 4 minutes left in Game 2's third quarter, he wasn't Kawhi anymore. He was Leonard. Kawhi started that game; Leonard fouled out of it with 47.7 seconds left to play with the Heat up by five.
Game 3 started, and Leonard was off to an excellent start. He attacked the basket with more energy than we've seen from him in any game during these playoffs and forced his opponents to foul him. For an instant, I thought that Kawhi might return. Instead, we saw something even greater.
His defense on James was astounding all night. Yes, James scored 14 in the first quarter, including 12 consecutive Heat points. That said, anyone watching that game would know that Leonard was not to be blamed. A lot of the points came in motion, when Leonard had shifted on to a player closer to the backcourt. Six of James' points came on two consecutive possessions in which Andersen came up from the block, set a pick on Leonard, and James took advantage of Duncan lazily lunging from the paint to jack up an open 3.
Allow me to digress for a second, since I'm thinking of Andersen. There are a number of reasons why I'd like to see the Spurs win this series: Kawhi/Leonard, my admitted "championship fatigue" that would like to see a team other than the defending champs win, and my desire to just be nice to Tim Duncan. But Chris Andersen's presence on the Heat is undeniably one of the reasons I'm rooting against them. I take no pleasure seeing him on the court, and he's taking up a roster spot that could be filled by anyone else. For one thing, I'm not sure he really wants to play basketball. Sure, he gets really excited when he's playing, but you only see this after he tips in someone else's miss after spending the previous twenty seconds moving in and out of the paint just enough to not have a 3-second violation called. His style of play creates an image of a big and tall guy who picked up a ball just to silence the countless friends and family who looked at his larger-than-normal frame and said "you should play basketball," when all he wanted to do was whittle soap animals and listen to the smooth jazz of Miles Davis. He made a career of just being bigger than other people, and not necessarily more talented or even motivated. I just want him to be truly happy and make boxes like Jesse always wanted. Also, his beard is gross. You just can't do it with his scraggly blondish hair. It'll never work.
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| Intimidating! |
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| Festive! |
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| Disgusting. |
Anyway, same play twice, and Leonard wasn't to blame either time. James scored eight points the rest of the way, a total that James can beat in a quarter, let alone three. No longer hampered by foul trouble, Leonard played James very close, and every single one of his drives required a lot of work just to get into the paint, where James settled for a kick out or a low-percentage shot. It was this defense that made me think good ol' Kawhi was back.
But, like Jesus resurrecting from the dead, the player known as Kawhi Leonard returned from fouling out of Game 2 better than anyone could have imagined, becoming KAWHI. His performance on offense was what drove this transformation home. Even on a night when the Spurs peaked at 19-of-21 from the field and looked like no one could miss a shot, KAWHI stood out. When the Spurs were stuck on any offensive possession throughout the game, KAWHI seemed to be standing at the arc as a dependable outlet, putting points on the board before he even finished his shooting motion. All told, he finished 10-of-13, including 3-of-6 from downtown, for a playoff career-high 29 points.
KAWHI was an important cog in the machine of the Spurs' offense last night, which slapped the Heat D around for 71 points in the first half. Despite that half and the final margin of 19 points, it's a mistake to think that the Spurs have figured Miami out and that this will be a five game series. In fact, San Antonio demolished them 113-77 in Game 3 last year, and we all know how that turned out. Counting out the Heat at this point is a mistake for two principal reasons. First, there is no way the Spurs will shoot as well as they did in Game 3 ever again, let alone in a game during this series. It is impossible to score 41 points in a quarter on 87% shooting. I witnessed San Antonio do just that in the first, and I still stand by my assertion. Second, the Heat are too good to let something like Game 3 stop them. Somehow, it didn't feel like Miami was out of it until there were only 2 or 3 minutes left, even though they never trailed by less than seven after the game's opening minutes and usually found themselves behind by double digits. The way the Heat move the ball on offense gives the viewer the constant feeling that they are one Wade drive or Allen three-ball away from a scoring run. They were down by three touchdowns at the half, their transition offense was surprisingly lackluster (accumulating the first two of their four fast break points midway through the third quarter on a James steal and layup) and still managed to scare Spurs fans that they'd lose the lead before long. That resilience combined with the sheer talent on the Miami roster is, in fact, an omen that the Heat are never out of the game.
The competition was tight every second of Games 1 & 2, save for the time James spent on the bench with his cramps. As a basketball fan, I thoroughly enjoyed this, and would love to see more of the same. Since I'm confident these two teams would each win exactly 500,000 games if they played each other a million times, we can probably expect that. That said, it might be just as fun to acquaint myself with this new player, KAWHI. As I see it, as long as KAWHI is on the court, the Spurs don't need to shoot 75% in a half to win. They just need him.
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