Kawhi Leonard Took Over and Turned Back the Spurs Clock

Any game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs, these days, is supposed to be a study in contrasts. The Thunder rely on Russell Westbrook to an unprecedented degree, unsustainable if he were any other player. The Spurs, in the season after Tim Duncan's retirement, remain the NBA's premier collaborators, holding onto the league's second-best record by way of a nightly assortment of pinging ball movement and lockstep weakside actions.

Last night in San Antonio, Westbrook held up his end of the bargain, going for 27 points and 14 assists. The Spurs, though, veered from expectation. Down the stretch, their familiar actions gave way to a simpler one: get the ball to Kawhi Leonard. Leonard scored 36 points, many of them in a furious late-game run, which let the Thunder and everyone watching know that San Antonio also has a superstar capable of doing it all himself, when he needs to.

With less than four minutes remaining in the third quarter, Westbrook's layup gave OKC a one-point lead. Over the remaining stretch, Leonard put up 17, and a nail-biter turned into an easy Spurs win. He supplemented recognizably Leonard-ish buckets—the midrange stuff he subsisted on when it was Duncan's team—with some grade-A soloing. He posted up, spun back, and canned fadeaways. He crossed over and pulled up. He launched and made a 26-foot triple, a heat-check from a player formerly known for keeping strictly to room temperature.

Midway through the fourth, Leonard provided the summarizing play. Isolated on the right wing, Leonard yo-yo-ed the ball between his legs, sent Victor Oladipo sprawling towards the endline, and drove in for a preposterous, up-and-under, off-handed layup, which drew a foul from Steven Adams. The crowd chanted "MVP!" while he took his free-throw; even with Westbrook on the floor, it didn't seem that misguided.

The step-by-step nature of Leonard's ascent to superstardom makes it seem more remarkable, not less. There is something jarring in the idea that those talents usually ascribed to the preposterously gifted—the ability not only to get shots but to take over games, to turn a team contest into an exercise of individual will—might be learned, year after year, by a guy who used to be a solid fourth option. Westbrook entered the league as a fireball. Leonard somehow adopted the mindset, maybe the same summer he honed the right-shoulder turnaround.

However it happened, the Spurs have now reset their franchise's clock back to the early-2000s, when one player was the crux of it all. In those days, Duncan guarded Shaquille O'Neal and scored 12 or 40, whichever was needed. Now, Leonard harangues Westbrook and does the same. The particulars have changed, but the Spurs are where they've always been.