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TORONTO – Between the multiple songs of the most valuable player to victory and the 31 points and 10 rebounds with which he blurred Friday's score in the Raptors' impressive 113-101 win over the Celtics, it would be easy to assume that this, Kawhi Leonard is already at his best.
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Kawhi Leonard scored 31 points and 10 rebounds, Serge Ibaka added 21 points and the Toronto Raptors beat the Boston Celtics 113-101 on Friday night in an early clash between contenders at the Eastern Conference.
The Raptors do not believe it yet, but they will pose a problem to their East opponents this season.
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Still, Leonard and his teammates would say that it's out of base and that the double star is about to get in shape and regain his wits. On the contrary, it's only the beginning of Leonard's basketball renaissance.
In the second game only of the season, Leonard managed to build a dominant streak in the third period, scoring 15 points on 5 out of 7 shots in just eight minutes. The scores – aided by coach Nick Nurse and goalkeeper Kyle Lowry in an attempt to win him the ball in good positions – unfolded in a variety of ways, mixing a dunk with a face-up rider and then a turnaround. three, and then finally finish with a lay-up. And it's during free throws that he pulled this quarter that the MVP's vocals started for the first time.
"It's a little early [for those chants], "he says, explaining that he appreciates the feeling.
But who could blame someone for being so excited so soon? Leonard had not scored 30 points in a match since May 3, 2017 against the Rockets, in the semifinals of the Western Conference. He acknowledged that he still had not his legs back after all the time that he had missed. And he is not yet quite comfortable with the offensive, which he often breaks to find his own luck.
"Half of our turnovers are due to the impossibility of finding the guys from a double team, or the impossibility of getting the pace on this shooting ground. time, between him be new and not to play for a year and a half, "said his teammate Raptors Danny Green, who came with Leonard from San Antonio via the trade. "He's really ahead of my schedule – well, I do not have a schedule for him, but I'm not expecting him to be where he is." Now let's hope that by December or the Christmas season, or January, he will be back to his old, efficient self. "
The fact that he is not yet complete did not prevent him from punishing the Celtics' efforts to stop him, whether it was Leonard who mistreated Gordon Hayward at a moment's notice, or Kyrie Irving who lost him enough long ahead to cut to the brink for a dunk down the lane.
"I think every time he's reviewing your goals, you're not doing anything wrong in terms of coverage – he's going to create some of those things because he's a great player," he said. Boston coach Brad Stevens, adding that the Celtics' doubles teams were sometimes too late to prevent him from playing. "No matter who was against Kawhi, Kawhi was fine."
There are two remarkable things that come out of Leonard's scores up to now. First, a number of firing attempts would seem to go against the Nurse's system, which is based on the movement of the ball. Leonard, a bit like Wednesday where a third of his shots came after 7 or more dribbles, took his time Friday to create the look he wanted; even though they did not always come in the flow of the offense.
The nurse suggested that he was in agreement with that for the moment.
"To be honest, it was not a ton of ball movement, but we were trying to get to some places where we thought we could go," he said, perhaps evoking an apparent disparity. .
Second, and more important in the long run, Leonard could quietly become the Raptors' own version of what gave Toronto its place for years, before LeBron James left the conference to go to the West. By taking sole control of second-half matches and controlling the tempo, Leonard could potentially cancel a top-notch defense like that of Boston, as James had done with Toronto's last finesse player that Leonard, who can simply muscle and return to the basket.
Friday morning at the shooting, Irving refused to compare Leonard's alien force to that of James, saying that there was no joy in such an exercise. But Lowry, questioned about the strength of Leonard's message, said he liked what he sees.
"Watching it is pretty cool – he can play his buttocks – especially when he's aggressive," Lowry said. "It's a guy who's hard to stop when he gets to his places, and I think tonight he played extremely hard and got to his places."
And to think, this is just the beginning for Leonard and his new team.
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