Most NBA players start their seasons rather rusty on the offensive end, as the league has decades’ worth of statistical trending that proves that offenses improve as the season moves along. San Antonio Spurs swingman Kawhi Leonard could probably point to that typical early-season malaise as the reason behind his 38 percent shooting so far this year, and a five-game swoon thus far is hardly anything to fret about.
What is worth fretting about, however, is the bout of conjunctivitis that has resulted in blurry vision for both of Leonard’s eyes, a condition that he says could persist until the offseason. That’s a worrying, and altogether painful reality that the fourth-year star is going to have to work through.
From Jeff MacDonald at Spurs Nation:
“My right eye, the vision’s not all the way back yet,” Leonard said. “Hopefully I can heal up soon. I’ve just got to keep competing so I can get used to it and get my rhythm going.”
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“It just has to run its course,” Leonard said. The doctor (team eye specialist Dr. Ed Rashid) said there were some military guys who had it for weeks and some for months.”
Asked if he believed he could play through his eye condition, Leonard said: “I have to. That’s what I’m doing now. I can’t wait and sit on the sidelines anymore just wasting games. It might not ever clear up until summer, so I’m playing now.”
This is more than a little frightening, even coming in the wake of what was easily Kawhi’s standout performance of the season – a 26-point, 10-rebound outburst pitched in the face of a wing-less Los Angeles Clippers squad on Monday night. If this condition takes an entire season to play out, the Spurs will lose the full impact of the all-around dervish that helped set them apart in last season’s championship run.
Then again, we’ve doubted this team before.
San Antonio has not looked great in its title defense thus far, because even after Monday’s solid enough showing in the comeback win over Los Angeles, the group still ranks fourth from the bottom in offensive efficiency. There have been sparks, most notably down the stretch against the Clippers, but the killer five-man units that sent defenses into a tizzy last spring and summer are nowhere to be found – even if the personnel is exactly the same.
That’s to be expected, whether you want to blame the early relative struggles on the typical misgivings of autumn, Leonard’s eye infection, injuries as a whole or some unholy amalgamation of all of these factors.
To Clipper coach Doc Rivers, who won a title in 2008 with the Boston Celtics but failed to repeat, there is another factor at work. Re-developing the sort of edge that made you a champion, when you’re already the champion.
Kurt Helin at Pro Basketball Talk spoke about as much with Doc on Monday:
“It’s hard because players change even though you have your same team. That’s what I found,” said Clippers coach Doc Rivers when asked about repeating as champs, which he tried to do with the Celtics after 2008. “I did a lot of research going into (2008-09 season), talked to a lot of NFL coaches, baseball… I thought Michael Jordan told me the most, the best. He said ‘You’re going to be shocked how different your same players are. It’s going to take half the year to get them back into their roles and all that.’ Because they have high character guys in San Antonio it’s probably easier, but it’s still hard.”
“Half the year.” That, in a way, is shocking. And it’s a tribute to Jordan’s title defenders through the years that his team looked no worse for the mental wear as they worked toward that intangible midway point.
Gregg Popovich’s teams, for various reasons, have never repeated as NBA champions. To do as much this June would serve as possibly the most remarkable repeat in league history, perhaps even more so than when the Boston Celtics were winning title after title after title in a nine-team league. San Antonio was almost cruelly pushed to the absolute brink in 2013, somehow it managed to return to the Finals setting and whip up on the defending champion Heat last June, and they’ll have to endure the same seven and a half month slog just for the chance to do it all over again. In this modern era, that’s quite the haul.
To work through as much, the Spurs will need Leonard to turn into the jack of all trades we saw on Monday more often than one time for every five games. Popovich, following Monday’s contest, explained why to reporters, as relayed by Sam Amick at USA Today:
"We ran more plays for him tonight than I ever have in his career," Popovich said afterward. "That's the plan. We've got to start giving him the ball. You know, he's the future. I don't think Timmy (Duncan) and Manu (Ginobili) are going to play any more than maybe six or seven more years. So we've got to let somebody else do something."
Laugh at “six or seven more years” all you want, we’re not putting anything past Duncan and Ginobili.
Leonard will be a restricted free agent this summer, as the Spurs made the smart move not to commit a maximum contract to their homegrown product just yet. San Antonio could find its way into a healthy batch of salary cap space this summer, and though Leonard’s unfinished contract will have a cap hold that would limit San Antonio from some potential signings, it will be for far less than the cap amount that he’d take up had the Spurs signed him to a massive extension in October.
Some players might feel uneasy about the way a team like the Spurs is parsing things out, but Leonard remains typically nonplussed and cognizant of what’s going down between himself and his team’s front office. From USA Today:
"I was never upset about (the extension)," Leonard said. "I mean they explained to me what their deal is and why they didn't do it yet. That'll play out. I'm just here to play basketball and have fun and try to win another championship. If I think about that, then I'm not going to be the same player that I am and will be just out of it.
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"I don't think I'm going anywhere," Leonard said. "I mean they love me here. I like the organization, and if it was up to me, I want to finish out with one team like a lot of great players have done, to stay with one organization their whole career and just be loyal to that. You never know. We'll see what happens next summer, but I'm pretty sure I'll be in a Spurs jersey for my whole life."
That’s more than warming news. All we ask is that Kawhi Leonard can see straight several months before he decides to put pen to paper.
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