Kawhi Leonard is without question one of the best players to ever dribble a basketball but where does he stand on the all-time list?
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In his 11-year NBA career, just 5 times Leonard has played 60-plus games in a season and has gathered 5 All-Star, 5 All-NBA, and 7 All-Defensive Team selections.
For helping the 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs win the NBA title against the defending champions Miami Heat and playing tremendous defense on LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, Leonard also picked up his first Finals MVP just in his 3rd year in the league.
The man also led a Toronto Raptors team to Championship in his one-year stay with the club with just one other All-Star in Kyle Lowry. That too against Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green-led Warriors. Injured, half of them might have been, but that led to Kawhi being considered among the Top-3 players league wide.
When fit and healthy The Claw is arguably the best player on the hardwood. His insanely underrated jumpers and highly accurate layups alongside his famous dogged defense make Kawhi the most important player on the court, even if he’s playing LeBron James’ Lakers or Curry’s Warriors.
So, where does it get him on the all-time list?
Jeff Green and Richard Jefferson have better career numbers than Kawhi Leonard
The Terminator can be a problem for anyone on the court, and that’s barring nobody in the entire NBA. Irrespective of size. But in his decade-long career in the league, the 15th overall pick of the 2011 Draft class has just scored over 11,800 points and well under 4000 rebounds and 2000 assists.
Putting that in perspective, even Richard Jefferson, Jeff Green, and many other players who never even got an All-Star selection but have/had longer NBA careers have better numbers than the current Clippers superstar.
Kawhi is one of the hardest players to rank because on one hand,he has more FMVPs than Steph, yet he still has less career points than Jeff Green🤣 pic.twitter.com/mkmsqwu8wg
— NBA Memes (@NBAMemes) August 21, 2022
Safe to say, Leonard, got his much-deserved selection into NBA’s Top-75 team last year. But if we think about where to rank him on the all-time list, he wouldn’t crack Top-20 or even 30 to be fair with everyone else who gave their everything to basketball.
And if you ask Leonard about it, he might not care about this slightly. He’d prefer to manage his load to be fit and win more championships for his teams than climbing up some ranking. He might even laugh it off. Good luck for forgetting it, if he did.
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