How Kawhi Leonard tamed an All-Star circus — and more

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The lights of the Intuit Dome found him, as they always do.

Not the strobes. Not the pyrotechnics. Not the manufactured glare of Red Panda, mascots and sponsored distractions. 

The real lights. The ones that matter. The ones that follow greatness like paparazzi follow scandal.

Kawhi Leonard stood at midcourt, and the Intuit Dome held its breath.

It had been a weekend of experiments, of round-robin rubrics and compressed clocks, of three teams where two once stood. 

The NBA, in its infinite tinkering, had fractured its showcase into fragments—12-minute bursts, a tournament where mathematics mattered as much as magic. 

NBA fans asked for competition. What they initially received was contention.

Then came Victor Wembanyama. Then came De'Aaron Fox. And then, in the third game, when the afternoon had begun to sag under the weight of its own novelty, came Kawhi Leonard.

He made it must-watch. Leonard made the All-Star game matter, even as it has become a serious point of contention among those who watch.

The tone arrived early. It arrived tall.

Wembanyama set the tone in the first game of the round-robin tournament, and he set it with the casual ferocity of a man who has never learned to pretend. 

The San Antonio Spurs' dexterous 7-foot-4ish center—elastic, impossible, a Gumby-esque monument to modern basketball evolution—walked onto the court, and immediately made it clear he hadn't come for the photo ops.

Wemby looked to be taking the All-Star Game seriously. 

He's played defense in an All-Star Game. 

In the first round of a made-for-TV tournament that most players treat as a glorified shootaround. He starts off blocking shots and dunking on people. He came to play.

"I'm matched up on you," Wembanyama told Anthony Edwards in the tunnel before they took the court, according to Edwards.

The Frenchman finished with 14 points, six rebounds and three blocks in that opening tilt, numbers that tell nothing of the story. 

Wembanyama contested everything. He erased shots that shooters believed were open. He moved like a guard in a center's body, like a thought in physical form, and his teammates—international stars accustomed to the All-Star's polite indifference—followed his lead.

"It's a game we love, it's a game I personally cherish," Wembanyama said. "Being competitive is the least I can do."

The World team pushed Team Stars to overtime. Edwards scored 13 points, including a game-tying 3 to force the extra session. 

Scottie Barnes eventually buried a game-winning triple—the first team to five points, because everything about this format required explanation—and Wembanyama stormed to the bench in disgust. 

The same fury he wears in San Antonio when rotations break down, when possessions are wasted, when excellence is betrayed by inattention. He had lost. But he had established the standard.

"[Wembanyama] set the tone, and it was definitely competitive with all three teams," Edwards said. "He set the tone, man. And it woke me up, for sure. I'm not gonna lie. He came out playing hard, so it's hard not to match that. So, [expletive], that's what happened. Sorry for my language; that's what happened, though."

Wembanyama's wake-up call reverberated into Game 2, where Team Stripes faced Team Stars with a different energy—veteran American talent against young American talent, experience versus exuberance, the past reaching for the future's throat.

Jaylen Brown poured in 11 points for Stripes. Edwards matched him. Cade Cunningham added 11 for Stars. The score tightened, twisted, refused to break.

And then Fox happened.

The San Antonio guard—Wembanyama's teammate, though they played on opposite sides in this strange format—took possession with seconds remaining and found himself staring at Cade Cunningham. 

What happened next defied easy description, but let's try:

Fox put Cunningham in the popcorn machine. 

Crossed him, cooked him, left him standing in a different zip code. The buzzer sounded. The ball floated through the air. The net snapped.

Stripes 42, Stars 40. Game over. Fox's dagger was still quivering in the hardwood.

That's what the fans wanted to see. 

Competition had crashed the party uninvited. And the party was better for it.

By the time Team Stripes faced Team World in the third game of the round robin, the building had found its rhythm. 

The experimental format—three teams, 12-minute games, a round-robin tournament and a final championship—had actually worked. 

Players competed. Crowds reacted. The millionaires and billionaires in attendance forgot to check their phones.

Then the Leonard showcase happened.

The Clippers' forward, added to the All-Star Game as an injury replacement—inserted by commissioner Adam Silver like a late substitution in a play no one expected to succeed—caught fire in ways that defy statistical comprehension.

In the third game, Leonard nearly outscored Team World in 12 minutes. Kawhi-31, World 45. 

The arithmetic reads like poetry. The performance played like prophecy.

Leonard shot 84 percent from the field to lead Team Stripes to a 48-45 thriller, and he did so with the aesthetic minimalism that has defined his career—no wasted motion, no excess, nothing that did not serve the singular purpose of putting the ball through the hoop and preventing the opponent from doing the same.

Eleven for thirteen from the field. Six for seven from three. Three rebounds. Two steals. 84 percent shooting against a Wembanyama—the human eraser, the league's leading shot-blocker, a 7-foot-4 nightmare who tried his best and watched Leonard shoot over him anyway.

He looked like Kawhi Jordan, and for 12 minutes, the comparison felt not hyperbolic but historical.

"We were watching it ... like, 'Damn, this guy is killing,'" Barnes recalled. "We were just like in awe. In shock, too. When a guy has it going like that, it's special. That's what the people want to see."

Edwards, waiting for the final game, approached Leonard with a message delivered through laughter and competitive terror: "I told him when we walked out for the last game, I said, 'Hey, you need to chill out.'"

He did not chill out. He could not. This is not what Kawhi Leonard does.

The Clippers fans—his fans, his city, his house—chanted MVP as the final seconds bled away. 

Leonard received four MVP votes despite losing the tournament, a statistical paradox that captures the essence of his art: individual transcendence in collective defeat, beauty in the losing effort, greatness recognized even when greatness is not enough.

The postgame podium found Leonard as it always does—measured, monotone, mysteriously compelling. 

The voice, barely rising above a whisper, somehow commands complete attention. The man who eschews social media's circus has mastered the older art of saying everything by saying almost nothing.

"It's been fun," Leonard said. "They always do a great job, even during our games, of just keeping us locked in and giving us energy throughout the whole 48 minutes. Los Angeles has been great."

Forty-eight minutes. Leonard spoke of regular-season endurance in a weekend of abbreviated bursts, revealing the mental framework that separates the professional from the performer.

For him, the All-Star Game was not an exception to be managed but an extension of identity—compete, always; defend, always; remain, always, the version of himself that arrived in Los Angeles as a champion and persists as a standard.

"Happy that Adam let me in," Leonard said, the two-time Finals MVP, requiring permission to participate in a showcase of stars. "That's what the home crowd wanted to see and I'm glad I was able to do something in that game."

Something. Thirty-one points in twelve minutes is not something. 

It is everything compressed into urgency, the career-long narrative of efficiency taken to its logical extreme.

A reporter asked about reaching "Flow State" in front of home fans. Leonard demurred with characteristic indirection: "It's great, you know. Happy that Adam let me in."

The deflection is the message. The silence is the statement.

When another journalist noted that scoring 31 in a regular game is crazy—"obviously, Klay had the 37 in one quarter, but for you to do it against World All-Stars, does that mean anything different?"—Leonard responded with the perspective of a man who has seen everything and been impressed by little.

"No, just having fun out there. Making shots. Obviously, these guys aren't competing at a regular-season schedule game, but it's always fun to go out and compete against those guys. Cherish the court with them. They're all legends, and they're playing great basketball."

On the format—this experimental triptych of teams and timers—Leonard offered the wisdom of a man who has seen basketball's evolution from defense-first grind to offense-only spectacle and back again: "I think it was good. Didn't really figure it out till we got here. Even as the game is going on, trying to figure out the records, how you play that out, point spread, or what. But I thought it was good. I still think going back to East-West will be great—I think guys will compete still."

The competitors, he suggested, make the competition. 

Not the structure. Not the stakes. The will.

When I asked the inevitable—"When you're healthy, are you the best player in the league?"—Leonard responded with the philosophy that has carried him through injury and triumph, through San Antonio's betrayal and Toronto's redemption, through the Clippers' endless promise and perpetual postponement:

"It's for you guys. For me, I think it's rotation—every day, every week, because you get guys coming out scoring 50, having great defensive games, and then the next night somebody's not playing well, somebody else is going to shine. So, for me, I think the ranking is just based on you just keeping the hype around the game."

He paused. The room leaned forward.

"But yeah, I feel like I'm one of the best at when I am playing basketball."

One of the best. The understatement is the point. Humility is the armor.

Another voice emerged from the presser: "Kawhi, in that game, obviously you're representing your home court and you're a local guy. Did you have an extra sense of motivation?"

"Yeah, I grew up coming up here watching, going to the convention center, seeing stars walk around and dreaming of being here," Leonard said. "I wanted to take the opportunity to play great, and I take advantage of it and go out there and ball. I was happy I was able to do that this year in LA."

The final question turned to the locker room mindset, the pregame conversation about competitiveness after years of criticism.

"Nothing," Leonard said. "We didn't really mention not playing hard or let's make this competitive. I didn't hear anything. We just went out there and competed. We wanted to win the game. We got competitors out there, and we got some championship pedigree. It's hard to turn off that switch when you're out there playing."

The championship game—Team Stars versus Team Stripes arrived as anticlimax. 

The young Americans won 47-21, a blowout that rendered the tournament's mathematics moot. 

Edwards scored eight points on 3-for-5 shooting and collected his trophy, receiving 10 of 14 MVP votes. Leonard managed one point on 0-for-4 shooting, his body perhaps reminding him that even machines require maintenance, that 31 points in 12 minutes extracts its tax.

It didn't matter. The damage was done. The statement was made.

Kevin Durant, who has seen every iteration of All-Star weekend over two decades, delivered the verdict.

"I think it was definitely a step up in the competitive department compared to last season. Kawhi was great. Ant was great. I think we did what we're supposed to do for the fans," Durant said.

What they were supposed to do. The phrase carries weight. 

For too many All-Star weekends, the obligation has been entertainment without effort, spectacle without stakes. 

Sunday in Inglewood offered something rarer: the genuine article, the unscripted collision of wills, the reminder that even in exhibition, excellence insists upon itself.

Wembanyama began it. Fox complicated it. Leonard, in the third game, when the afternoon had begun to drift toward irrelevance, made it must-watch—made it matter, made it memorable.

Edwards, asked postgame about the format, credited the Frenchman who started everything. 

"I think it makes us compete because it's only 12-minute games, and the three different teams separate the guys. I think it was really good," Edwards said.

Leonard, asked whether the new format should stay, offered a diplomat's answer. 

"Whatever you guys want. Whatever grabs the attention of the consumer, I'm for it," Leonard said.

But pressed again on returning to tradition, he allowed a small concession. 

"I still think going back to East-West will be great. I think guys will compete still," Leonard said.

Maybe they will. 

Maybe Wembanyama's example—his refusal to treat All-Star minutes as downtime, his insistence on playing defense in a game designed for offense—will linger. 

Perhaps Fox's dagger, Leonard's clinic, and Edwards's Kobe Bryanttrophy will combine into something lasting, something more than a one-year experiment that worked despite everyone's expectations.

Or maybe it was just one afternoon. One 12-minute window where a quiet superstar reminded everyone what he looks like when the switch flips.

The lights found him, as they always do.

Not the strobes. Not the pyrotechnics. Not the manufactured glare of halftime shows and sponsored distractions. 

The real lights. The ones that matter. The ones that follow greatness like memory follows meaning.

Kawhi Leonard stood at midcourt, and the Intuit Dome held its breath. 

For 12 minutes, he kept it from falling. 

Made it forget the compressed clocks, the sordid recent history of All-Star Weekned and the round-robin confusion. Made it remember why we watch, why we care, why a game played by millionaires in February can still feel like the only thing in the world worth seeing.

For the first time in years, the game itself felt like enough.

From a variety of roles, Szoboszlai has reached double figures for the season while looking a worthy inheritor of Steven Gerrard’s No 8 shirt and a future Liverpool captain

Seguir leyendo...