Kawhi Leonard (born June 29, 1991, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American professional basketball player noted for his prowess on the defensive and offensive sides of the ball whose status as one of the NBA’s best wing players has been hampered by recurring injuries. He currently plays small forward for the Los Angeles Clippers. Leonard previously played for the San Antonio Spurs and the Toronto Raptors, each of which he led to an NBA championship, in 2014 and 2019, respectively. He won the finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for his performances in both years. He has also been twice named the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year (2015 and 2016). In 2021 Leonard was named one of the NBA’s 75 all-time best players.
Leonard is the youngest of five children of Kim Robertson and Mark Leonard. The couple split when Kawhi Leonard was five years old, and Robertson moved with her children to Moreno Valley, California. Leonard’s father, who owned a car wash in Compton, California, remained an important figure in his son’s life. Leonard, following in his father’s footsteps, picked up football, which he played alongside basketball through his freshman year of high school. He also worked some weekends and summers at his father’s car wash. During Leonard’s junior year, his father was shot and killed at the car wash, and the crime was never solved. Despite this personal tragedy, Leonard was a standout on his basketball team during his senior year, winning the state’s player of the year award.
Leonard, who had grown to 6 feet 7 inches (2.01 meters), was ESPN’s 56th-ranked recruit coming out of high school. He received offers from multiple top-tier Pac-12 programs but ultimately opted to play at the Mountain West Conference school San Diego State University (SDSU). Leonard joined coach Steve Fisher’s Aztecs for the 2009–10 season and made an instant impact, leading the team with 12.7 points and 9.9 rebounds per game. Leonard’s sophomore campaign saw him average 15.5 points and 10.6 rebounds per game while leading the Aztecs to a 34–3 record and a number two seed in the NCAA tournament, where they lost to the eventual national champion, the University of Connecticut. Leonard declared for the 2011 NBA draft, forgoing his two remaining years of eligibility at SDSU.
Leonard was selected with the 15th overall pick by the Indiana Pacers. However, the Pacers already had wing players Paul George and Danny Granger, so they immediately traded their newly acquired forward and a second-round pick to the San Antonio Spurs in exchange for George Hill. During his rookie year, in 2011–12, Leonard averaged nearly 8 points per game, saw 39 starts, and was named to the NBA’s All-Rookie first team. In the 2012–13 season the young forward started all but one of the games for which he was eligible, as the Spurs, led by Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili, made it to the NBA finals, where they lost to the Miami Heat in seven games.
In the 2013–14 season Leonard continued to play at a high level behind Duncan and Parker in the regular season. The Spurs again reached the finals, and Leonard was the team’s best player in the concluding series, where his team had a rematch against the Heat. This time, the Spurs won the series 4–1, and Leonard—who averaged 17.8 points on 61 percent shooting while also defending Miami star LeBron James—was named the finals MVP. During the following season Leonard averaged 16.5 points and a career-high in steals (2.3) per game on his way to a Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) award, joining Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan as the only players to win both finals MVP and DPOY awards during their careers.
Leonard’s next two seasons (2015–16 and 2016–17) saw a huge jump in the forward’s scoring as he became the Spurs’ first option: he averaged 21.2 and 25.5 points per game, respectively. Leonard was named an All-Star and first-team All-NBA both years. The following season (2017–18) Leonard was sidelined with a nagging quadriceps injury and played in only nine games. His relationship with the Spurs frayed during this time, as the team and Leonard disagreed on the right medical course to take to resolve his injury. Ultimately, in June 2018, he requested a trade, and the next month he was sent to the Toronto Raptors.
