When Kawhi Leonard was on the floor in Game of the Western Conference finals, a 113-111 Warriors victory, the Spurs were a plus-21. They were a minus-23 when Leonard was on the bench. They were up 20 when he suffered his ankle injury at the hands of a wayward Zaza Pachulia foot. Following the dramatic finish as the Warriors completed their comeback, the easy narrative to form was that if Leonard had not been injured, the Spurs would have won the game. That the narrative is easy does not make it false, nor does using the term narrative. That's the story, and it makes sense.
So we have two scenarios in this evaluation. First what actually happened, and the counterfactual where Leonard did not get hurt. But here's the fun thing. Because it didn't happen, we have no way of actually knowing whether Leonard going down was the difference in a Warriors win or not. Let's explore the possibilities, here, and what they mean.
Kawhi Leonard doesn't get hurt and the Spurs win
This is the most widely accepted hypothetical, like I said. Leonard had 26 points, eight rebounds, three assists, and shot 7 of 13 in just under 24 minutes in Game 1. He was cooking. He's the best perimeter defender in the league, and the Warriors seldom went at him in the first half.
Particularly, Leonard was able to deter and take away Stephen Curry. When Curry got loose in the third quarter, it freed up the rest of the offense as well. Leonard started the third matched up on Klay Thompson. The Warriors did a fair amount of keeping Leonard away from the play in the first half. They went at him some. In particular, Kevin Durant looked like he wanted to go at Leonard, calling for the ball and being aggressive when he did get opportunities, like on a first-quarter Euro-step he got Leonard on. But for the most part, the Warriors looked to attack elsewhere.
Durant finished with 34, Curry with 40. It's not just the offensive loss when Leonard went down. It's that Leonard could have taken away one of those two stars. The Warriors' comeback really was just those two. That was it. If you just remove one of the two from that second half, the Spurs probably win comfortably, with Leonard's added offense and gravity, as just his presence as a threat changes the Warriors' defense.
A 1-0 series lead shifts everything. The Warriors are on their heels again, challenged for the first time in the playoffs. The Spurs know they can beat them and have taken home court. We would actually have a real playoff series to get excited about.
The extrapolation of this whole scenario can be used as evidence that Kawhi Leonard is the Most Valuable Player in the NBA. Without him, the Spurs blew a 25-point lead. With him, they were up 20. That seems pretty cut and dried in terms of "value." Now, this whole conversation is without impact on the actual MVP award. The votes have already been cast, it's a regular-season award, and how this game went should not influence what you thought of Leonard's season from November through April. But it is interesting if you want to go beyond regular season results and just consider what player actually means the most to his team.
With Leonard, the Spurs were up by 20 on the 67-win juggernaut, on the road, and had answers for them everywhere. Take Leonard off, and they fell apart. LeBron James may be the only player with that kind of impact, and at least he's got Kyrie Irving, not Patty Mills or Dejounte Murray, and Kevin Love instead of LaMarcus Aldridge. If you think the Spurs win with Leonard, you're crediting him with being the difference in a 20-point win or a two-point loss, which is a massive differential when you're facing a team like the Warriors.
Kawhi Leonard gets hurt and the Warriors win
But, hypothetically speaking, consider the following:
- The Spurs won Game 5 in San Antonio and Game 6 in Houston against the Rockets, without Leonard. We are less than a week removed from being shown that even against lesser competition, the Spurs can win without Leonard.
- The Warriors had already started their comeback. Curry had 16 points between the six-minute mark of the second quarter when Leonard went down. He was starting to cook. Once the Warriors' momentum gets going, it's hard to stop. They just needed to get stops. And while Leonard is efficient and brilliant, the Spurs are low on guys that can make you pay if you help on him.
- This is the big thing: basketball is very rarely linear in the effects of in and out.
You cannot predict these things. It's chaos theory. It's not just that Pachulia sliding under Leonard altered the course of the game; it's that Pachulia sliding under Leonard altered the rest of the events of that game in unpredictable ways. Maybe the Warriors go to Durant more, who's had success against Leonard and he just cooks him, and goes off. There are all these "maybes' that play into it.
Are those outcomes likely? No. But the outcome of Game 1 were not determined based on the availability of Leonard. Basketball, at its core, is all about complex dynamics resulting in probabilities. (OK, it's about a lot of other things, too, but for the purposes of our discussion it's relevant.) There are a number of outcomes where the Warriors still come back and win that game where their probability is not insignificant. This isn't the Magic or the Jazz or even the Rockets. It's the Warriors. Even when the Spurs were up 25, everyone knew Golden State would close the gap.
In that scenario, how do you feel about the most valuable player? Does it change? Does it not change? That's the problem with using the "how is the team without him" construct for evaluating the MVP award. You have to actually see it, and then be able to definitely prove that his absence was the difference.
The end story
Regardless of what could have happened, here's what did happen. Leonard was injured, and will likely miss Game 2. The Spurs will almost assuredly be in a 2-0 hole headed back to Texas, with their best player hobbled. The results of Game 1 are debatable, even if they seem obvious on the surface. What is undeniable, however, is that the Warriors' already heavily-favored road to the NBA Finals gets that much shorter without Leonard. As for the Spurs, already facing an uphill climb, they have little recourse but to do what they've always done, try to manufacture a victory out of effort, strategy, discipline and cunning.
It will not be easy.
