After two dominant games in three days, Kawhi Leonard has 'no complaints' about his health
Kawhi Leonard dominated in the fourth quarter on Friday night at Scotiabank Arena, essentially putting the Toronto Raptors into position to win the game.
While they eventually fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-109, Leonard dropped 20 of his 37 points and shot 6-of-11 from the field in the final quarter. And, perhaps most importantly, he played the entire thing. In total, Leonard played 35 minutes, following up a 42-minute game on Wednesday.
After a season where he’s repeatedly been benched due to “load management” — he’s missed 19 games for that reason — seeing Leonard play at seemingly full strength twice in three days has to be a welcome sign for the Raptors.
If nothing else, it appears that their “load management” strategy has been working.
“We’ll see how it goes moving forward, but me missing games isn’t just to keep me fresh,” Leonard said Friday, via SportsNet’s Michael Grange. “It’s obviously making sure I don’t re-injure something that I was out for last year. Like I said before, they’ve been doing a good job of reading images and making sure that I’m improving instead of declining on the health side.”
With the playoffs mainly run on an every-other-day format, the past three days has been a good test run for Leonard and the Raptors. Even though they split their two games against the Thunder — edging out a 123-114 overtime win Wednesday — Leonard has looked back to normal. He’s not just succeeding on offense, either. According to The Athletic, he spent 56 combined possessions on both Paul George and Russell Westbrook on Wednesday.
Friday was much of the same, and Raptors coach Nick Nurse said he was happy with how physical Leonard looked.
“I liked the force he was playing with offensively,” Nurse told The Athletic. “He did get hung up a couple of times, but he got hit a lot. He did shoot 10 free throws, which might be a record for this year, but he could have shot another 10, to be honest. He was really getting jolted around on drives and hit a lot. They made him play through a lot of it and I thought he did, for the most part.”
The Raptors have just nine games left in the regular season, and Leonard is sure to be a critical piece for the team if they are going to make a deep postseason run.
And after his repeated battles with injuries, both this season and last, Leonard said he now has “no complaints.”
"It feels a lot better than when I started the season,” Leonard said, via TSN’s Josh Lewenberg. “There was a little spell where it kinda plateaued but everybody put their minds together and we figured out a way. Things are looking good and I'm feeling good."
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