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Who protects Kawhi Leonard on the nuggets? Remove the options

One of the most fascinating players in the NBA late season this year is Kawhi Leonard, who can help to lead the clipper wide when he stays healthy.

Los Angeles (5) will compete in the opening round of the Western Conference afternoon with game 1 against April 19 at 3:30 p.m.

One of the most fascinating elements that can be seen in the NBA in the Nach season is, like every team, try to defend the superstars in the opposing teams.

We have used all NBA Advanced Statistics Player data tracking data available on NBA.com for this series. This made it possible for us to get a feeling for how often every player was defended by another player in the league and how well he did during these options.

This project deals with previous data to predict the primary defenders for each team. It does not take any switches, rotations, doubles and other more advanced systems that can use defenses.

Who defends Kawhi Leonard?

The answer to this question is pretty simple: Aaron Gordon will serve in the first round of the post -season between the Nuggets and the Clippers as the main defender of Kawhi Leonard.

No player Leonard has guarded more possessions than Gordon among all players in the NBA, who dates back to 2017 and dates back in the post -season. In fact, it is not even particularly close compared to the rest of the league.

Gordon defended Leonard for a combined 690.1 possession, while Dorian Finney-Smith is the second best with 531.1 possessions. The results also looked encouraging for Gordon.

Leonard has achieved an average of 36.0 points per 100 possessions against all defenders since 2017. But against Gordon he only has an average of 22.2 points per 100.

Here is more from Tony Jones about why this works so well for Denver (via ” The athlete):

“You can expect a lot of Aaron Gordon as Leonard’s main defender. Gordon is the only Denver player with the length, sportiness, discipline and strength to protect Leonard and also deal with his ability to be on the trail with shot torches.”

Due to the success that Gordon had on Leonard, there is an obvious counter for the Clipper.

This is what you will do to avoid the Matchup according to John Schuhmann (via nba.com):

“Leonard has not played in any of the four regular season games against the Nuggets, but we can expect Aaron Gordon to be his main defender in this series. The clipper offensive schedule will probably start making a fewer defenders on their best player.”

Leonard did much better when he arrived against Jamal Murray (48.9 points per 100), Nikola Jokić (74.1 points per 100) and Michael Porter Jr. (37.1 points per 100).

If he can get hot on this switch, especially if James play Harden and Ivica Zubac well, the series for Los Angeles could look strong.

Otherwise, Gordon is about such a good answer as for a two -time champion like Leonard.

(Tagstotranslate) NBA

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