Kawhi Leonard is known for his stoic demeanor out on the court and in real life as he hardly ever seems to show any emotion ever during the biggest moments. Kawhi's calm, cool and collected approach was on display again on Wednesday night as his Los Angeles Clippers defeated the Boston Celtics in an overtime thriller.
Late in the fourth quarter, with the Clips trailing by six, Kawhi caught the ball on the wing, quickly skirted around Marcus Smart and then set his sights on the rim where Boston's Daniel Theis was waiting. Waiting to get dunked on.
As seen in the footage embedded above, everyone in Staples Center went nuts including Mike Breen and the Clippers bench, while Kawhi merely hovered down from the rim like Dave Chappelle doing a Prince skit and robotically got ready for the next play on defense. After the game, Leonard was asked to describe exactly what happened on that play and he was perfectly on brand.
Says Kawhi, "What do you want me to say? Patrick threw me the ball, I took two dribbles into the paint and tried to jump high and dunk the basketball.”
Of course, NBA Twitter was much more enthusiastic about the emphatic stuff. Check out some of the reactions to Kawhi's posterizing slam on Theis in the tweets embedded below.
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197384552299159552
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197395763715657729
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197384317976141824
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197384699599036425
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197386032930418688
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197427940570648577
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197384937852280832
https://twitter.com/_/status/1197411485506342912