LA Clippers: NBA 2K21 severely underrated Kawhi Leonard

The LA Clippers Kawhi Leonard is severely underrated in NBA 2K21.

NBA 2K21 just dropped and basketball fans everywhere are hopping on. While many are focused on building their MyCareer players right now, some are hopping online or into MyGM to run their team. If they pick the LA Clippers though, they might be surprised by how Kawhi Leonard is rated.

Overall, Leonard drew a 96. This ties him as the fourth-best player in the game with James Harden and behind Giannis Antetokounmpo (97 OVR) and LeBron James (97 OVR).

If they want Giannis as best overall, then that’s fine. I get it. LeBron I feel is more of a historical ranking and not necessarily the one we have now. Regardless, these are the top two MVP candidates, so Kawhi at third is what it is. But let’s look at Kawhi in a more broken down matter and you see why he’s still severely underrated in a few places.

The first thing that jumps out has me baffled. Kawhi Leonard only has an 81 mid-range in NBA 2K21. Read that again. Kawhi only has an 81 mid-range in 2K. What’s even worse? Giannis has an 84 mid-range rating. In what world does that make sense? None.

The other big hole in his rating comes from his rebounding. Mr. “Board Man Gets Paid” himself has an overall 58 in rebounding. I’m not saying he’s an elite rebounder but averaging 6.4 per game over his career seems a lot better than his rating suggests.

Leonard’s intangibles are rated as 55 overall. While intangibles aren’t broken down, it would seem it encompasses a lot of the mental side (outside of basketball IQ). This means his clutch play, his mental toughness, etc. are all according to 2K bad. I get that rating a person’s mental makeup cannot be an easy task but I don’t think there is anything that jumps out about Kawhi that says he has bad intangibles. For reference, LeBron has an 85 in intangibles while Giannis also has a 55. I don’t understand it.

Here are a few other nitpicky ratings that while not as egregiously bad as the ones I just discussed, still feel a little low:

• Strength: 79
• Pass Accuracy: 79
• Pass IQ: 78
• Block: 56 (This one might be the recency bias in me)

I’m not advocating that Kawhi get huge boosts but some of these ratings (the mid-range being the main culprit) seem like the developers just pulled numbers out of a hat. Maybe if the LA Clippers pull off winning the NBA Finals, we can see those numbers get the boost they deserve.