Nick Nurse Reveals Thoughts on Kawhi Leonard's Championship Run with Raptors

Nurse explained Leonard's load-management process within games.

Mason Bissada | May 6, 2021

Nick Nurse Reveals Thoughts on Kawhi Leonard's Championship Run with Raptors /

Toronto Raptors Head Coach Nick Nurse recently shared some of his memories from the Raptors’ 2018-19 championship run, in which Kawhi Leonard was named Finals MVP.

Nurse gave some insight as to how Leonard operates, specifically pertaining to load management. Leonard received criticism that year for taking quite a few regular-season games off for rest, but it clearly paid dividends, as he had a healthy postseason, during which he was arguably the best player in the world. But, as Nurse explains, Leonard also paced himself within each game.

“You learn a lot about all your guys when you go through a run like that,” Nurse reflected. “I learned that he really had a good gauge of who he was and what he could do...I just kind of always remember that fourth quarter when he'd be out and you'd say, ‘hey it's about time to roll’ and he'd say, ‘I need another minute and a half’...and I would say... ‘all right, I hope this minute, I hope we’re still here’ and he’d take that minute...and he'd go out there and make every offensive rebound and his guy wouldn't score and he'd score...he kind of knew that he had about six and a half minutes of great play left and that's what you’d usually get.”

Leonard clearly knows his own body, and believes that six and a half great minutes is more valuable than eight solid minutes. Who knows? Perhaps if Leonard checked back in a minute and a half earlier in the fourth quarter of game 7 of the Raptors’ second-round matchup against the Philadelphia 76ers, he wouldn’t have had the same amount of lift on the shot that became his now-infamous buzzer-beater that won his team the series.

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