Ty Lue needed no clipboard in the huddle — the play explained itself. Eleven seconds on the shot clock. One-point lead. A minute left. One guy sitting on the bench who had stuck a dozen jumpers without a flinch of emotion.
“This is what we’re running,” Clippers coach Lue said, describing a fourth-quarter huddle late in their Game 2 win. “Kawhi, get a basket, and let’s get a stop, and we win this game.”
And thus, six-time All-Star Kawhi Leonard isolated out top, and the possession was over before it truly began. Aaron Gordon stuck his 6-foot-8 frame out in front of him; he may as well have been a foot shorter. Russell Westbrook hinted at coming over to help. He didn’t.
Leonard got a basket, elevating for an all-too-easy midrange shot for his 38th and 39th points. He got a stop a few seconds later, after a bad pass from Nikola Jokic. The Clippers, indeed, won the game.
Gordon and his fellow Nuggets were left empty-handed and empty-minded for answers on how to stop Leonard.
“He was as hot as fish grease,” Gordon said postgame, in the locker room.
“Some of those shots he was making, you gotta shake his hand. You have to make it more difficult for him.”
Gordon did his darndest, the versatile wing with a hand right there on a flurry of Leonard jumpers. But the Nuggets didn’t make it particularly difficult, ultimately, in a virtuoso performance by the cold-blooded wing Monday night. Perhaps spaced out by the Clippers’ flurry of offensive threats, the Nuggets and interim head coach David Adelman didn’t consistently send multiple bodies at Leonard until the fourth quarter; his final two buckets came over Gordon’s outstretched arms with only a faint idea of nearby help.
“He had a night,” Jokic said postgame. “It’s really hard to — maybe we should just make him feel more crowded. But I think he’s so used to it.”
“He did make tough shots,” Jokic continued. “But are those really tough shots for him, the guy who’s making those for such a long period of time?”
Indeed, there is little the 33-year-old Leonard hasn’t seen and little the world hasn’t seen from Leonard. The two-time Finals MVP is now in his 12th playoff run. But Monday night was as perfect a shotmaking clinic as he’s ever put on, a tightly-knotted handle and line-drive jumper on full display in a stunning 15-of-19 night. He didn’t miss a second shot from the floor until three minutes into the fourth quarter, elevating with machine-made efficiency to stick daggers into the heart of every Nuggets run.
It was particularly special for himself and the Clippers, given a well-documented odyssey that has left Leonard’s health in question for most every series since he battled the Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals in the COVID bubble. After years of torn ACLs, surgeries and load management, his career seemed to hang in the balance after he withdrew from the Paris Olympics for injury concerns. Instead, the Nuggets fell on the wrong end of transcendence, after seasons of Leonard watching Clippers playoff runs from the bench.
“I’m just happy that I’m able to move, and coming out the game feeling well,” Leonard said postgame. “And that’s what I’m taking my pride on — is just being healthy.”
Clippers point guard James Harden, a fellow Los Angeles native and longtime Leonard friend, said postgame the forward hadn’t “even a little bit” been properly appreciated for the road he’d endured.
“It’s always negative,” Harden said. “It’s always what he’s been through, and what he’s not able to do, just because of something that he can’t control. But, we don’t appreciate how great he is when he’s actually out there and putting on performances like this, tonight.”
Leonard is no longer the X-factor that’s hung over so many Clippers seasons of years past. He’s now a virtual certainty to stick an open jumper, and a virtual certainty to tear through single coverage. And the Nuggets, in addition to solving coverages against Nikola Jokic, must solve the Rubik’s Cube of sending multiple bodies at both Harden and Leonard — or risk their season shredded.
“We know if we got a healthy Kawhi,” Lue said postgame, “we can win any series.”
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.
