Stars including Victor Wembanyama paid tribute<\/a>, along with one of his former prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s, Kawhi Leonard<\/a>.<\/p>\n The LA Clippers<\/a> superstar praised Popovich\u2019s \u2018phenomenal career\u2019<\/a> where he carried on until he no longer could, laying the foundations for another era of Spurs success.<\/p>\n Kawhi Leonard was drafted in 2011 to the San Antonio Spurs, and by the end of his second season, he was playing in the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n Leonard and the Spurs were moments away from defeating the Miami Heat in Game 6 before Ray Allen\u2019s legendary shot saved the day for their opponents, led by Dwyane Wade<\/a> and LeBron James<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Heat won game 7 with a score of 95-88, leaving Popovich reflecting on Miami winning the title for a second successive year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Popovich gave a classy response to Miami\u2019s victory, paying tribute to the opponents, commenting: \u201cPlayers step up in the playoffs. Tonight a great example of that was Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. They played Hall\u2011of\u2011Fame basketball tonight.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s some of the best basketball they both played at the same time throughout the entire playoffs from what I saw.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have somebody like Shane [Battier] come off the bench and knock it down the way he did, that\u2019s tough to match. If you\u2019re going to match that, you have to be pretty perfect. I didn\u2019t think we played our best game in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n There was one San Antonio Spurs player who coach Popovich was very impressed by in the Game 7 loss, his young prospect Kawhi Leonard, competing in his first ever Finals.<\/p>\n \u201cI just talked to Kawhi and told him he was absolutely amazing. Nobody expected him at this young age to play the way he has through the whole playoffs. He really is a star in the making.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s just beginning to feel what he has. He\u2019s like a little baby learning how to walk, as far as NBA basketball is concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n Kawhi Leonard went on to become a two-time NBA Champion<\/p>\n Within 12 months, Kawhi Leonard and the San Antonio Spurs were NBA Champions, demolishing the Heat 4-1 in the 2014 Finals.<\/p>\n This experience paid off for Kawhi Leonard in 2019 when he powered the Toronto Raptors to beat the Golden State Warriors to the title.<\/p>\n He went on to join the LA Clippers, an experience that has been a disappointment, largely due to injuries.<\/p>\n Kawhi rolled back the years<\/a> with his performances<\/a> in the series against the Denver Nuggets<\/a>, an eventual Game 7 defeat.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary coach Gregg Popovich has stepped down from his role with the San Antonio Spurs. After sitting out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3778],"tags":[7,572,3349,144,529,185,295,189,3881,6,4106,474],"class_list":{"0":"post-9300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-heat","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dwyane-wade","10":"tag-gregg-popovich","11":"tag-heat","12":"tag-kawhi-leonard","13":"tag-lebron-james","14":"tag-miami","15":"tag-miami-heat","16":"tag-miamiheat","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-nba-legends","19":"tag-san-antonio-spurs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114452484899380089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/GettyImages-1172331281-889x627.jpg\")
Photo by MediaNews Group\/Bay Area News via Getty ImagesGregg Popovich was thrilled with Kawhi Leonard\u2019s early impact<\/p>\n