Kawhi Leonard – Good Health
When Kawhi Leonard is playing, he’s the best player on the floor. This means that the most important ability, as always, is availability. With a rough early schedule that had more back-to-backs and rest disadvantage games than most if not all of the other teams in contention, the Clippers have been routinely mocked by teams not going through it for load management.
Except Kawhi is ending the year in great physical shape, and showing it in his numbers, while certain other top-level players have been run down from playing an average of 35 minutes a game with no significant breaks.
Mr. Leonard’s way is better. Health is number one with a bullet for him in particular.
Paul George – Consistency
When Paul George is on, he’s on fire and can’t miss. When he’s off his game, it shows. His offensive performance against the Lakers was not what we were hoping for — shooting about 28% from the field, and 1-for-6 from behind the arc — so there’s a lot of room for improvement there.
The reality is that few players are like Kawhi Leonard — few can simply force the game to be played on their terms, at their pace, like Kawhi does. So expecting Paul George to come back from injury and find a rhythm when he can’t even play with a consistent starting lineup due to injuries elsewhere might have simply been asking too much, even from an MVP candidate.
With the team getting healthy again, we should start seeing consistency of lineups, consistency of practices, and eventually, consistency of Paul George.