Is there a bigger enigma in sports than Kawhi Leonard? The dude is one of the biggest superstars in the NBA and I can’t tell if he spends his weekends giving to charitable causes or chopping up human body parts to store in his basement freezer. I guess the fact that he’s so difficult to define makes him so appealing.
I’m convinced that he could have farted through the microphone at the Raptors parade and it’s meaning would be dissected in Canadian scholarly journals for generations to come.Raptors head coach Nick Nurse peeled back the curtain on his star player in an interview with ESPN’s Zach Lowe on The Lowe Post podcast.
Nurse claimed that Kawhi was widely considered the funniest guy in the room for the entire season for his biting remarks at exactly the right moment.
“He’s the funniest guy in the film room because he waits and delivers the knockout punchline.”
Nurse then recalled a particularly deep-cutting story about how Kawhi Leonard chopped him down to size during a playoff film session while the rookie head coach was attempting to inspire the team via war stories from his D-League days.
“I just told them that one time in the D League, we won a Game 1 on the road. It was actually against Rio Grande Valley, and nobody really expected us to. We went down there — we lost all our players to call-ups. And they were great. And all of the sudden, we get back home and the city of Des Moines was going crazy because we were up 1-0 and had two home games. We were going to win the D League title. They were planning parades, asking us for ring sizes. Next game, we went out and got beat by about 25. I was just trying to tell that story to say to the guys, ‘Listen, everybody’s gonna try to take you to places that you’re not to yet. You can’t let that happen.’
“So, I started telling the story about parades, and Kawhi jumped in right in the middle and goes, ‘The D League? I’m done listening to this story.’
“So, I had to take the heckling and move on.”
I guess there’s just one thing left to be said…
— Sam Kuperman (@samkoop) June 14, 2019
Or whatever that was.
[h/t For The Win, The Lowe Post podcast]
