Creating San Antonio Spurs All-Decade teams for the 2010s

Small Forward: Kawhi Leonard (2011-12 to 2017-18)

Statistics for the Decade:

• 16.2 points, 6.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.8 steals per game
• 49.5 percent from the field, 38.6 percent from 3-point (3.4 attempts), 84.6 percent from the free throw line
• 59.7 true shooting percentage, 56.3 win shares, 25.8 value over replacement level

Apologies in advance.

If you need to, cover your eyes the way Kawhi Leonard used to cover opposing players on the … sorry. I’ll pass on Kawhi Leonard jokes, similar to Leonard passing his physical to all but guarantee his trade to the …  never mind that.

All jokes aside, it’s unlikely the sour summer of 2018 will ever subside for San Antonio Spurs fans. Five years from now, it still feels reasonable to imagine the Spurs plowing along, a 27-season postseason streak in tow, booing a 33-year-old Kawhi Leonard as he manages his load.

Love it or hate it, what Kawhi Leonard did create in San Antonio still deserves a moment of silence. (Or maybe not silence? Who knows?)

Before the days of Uncle Dennis and Zaza Pachulia, there was a 407-game run in San Antonio in which Leonard was either: a) a player seen as a building block in the post-Tim Duncan regime, b) THE player who was the building block in the post-Duncan regime.

Quads and ankles are always the first thing we think of with Leonard these days, but how about ring fingers? At age 22, was he not the youngest Finals MVP since Magic Johnson in 1980? Was he not the engineer of a Spurs train that won 67 games in 2015-16, and then 61 in 2016-17? The player on back-to-back 60-win teams?

This is something even Duncan and David Robinson can’t claim to have done.

During that three-year run from 2014-15 to 2016-17, we worked overtime, wondering if there was a team in the Western Conference with the attrition needed to beat the Golden State Warriors. Leonard was the alpha dog on one of the few teams that came close.

Perhaps the only statistic that fits: only six players in the NBA had a higher net rating than Leonard’s plus-11.6 per 100 possessions during that time frame. Five of those players were Warriors.

It sort of makes one wonder: Leonard isn’t even 30 years old yet. But, say you stripped away his last two runs in Toronto and Los Angeles, leaving just his six-year crash course in San Antonio. Would that alone be worthy of enshrinement in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame?

Here’s the trophy case. Finals MVP in a series that included Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, two Defensive Player of the Year awards — something only eight players in league history have done. Two top-three finishes in regular season Most Valuable Player voting and a pair of All-Star and All-NBA selections.

Perhaps you say no. But as moral to the story, Kawhi Leonard did some things in his six-year reign in San Antonio that 99 percent of the league’s players can say they’ve never done.

The defense rests. I could sit here, and make another joke about Leonard’s defense, or his need for rest and load management.

Instead, I’ll silence myself and allow you to make your case for Rudy Gay.