Kawhi Leonard Is Boring — And I Love Him For That
The enigmatic Raptors forward made me realize I don’t need my athletes to be celebrities too
I’ve always been invested in sports more for the players than the games.
Perhaps I owe that quirk to a lifetime of rooting for teams that have mostly disappointed me — I grew up a fan of the perpetually mediocre Minnesota Timberwolves and the Cincinnati Bengals, who seem eternally damned to never extend a season beyond the first round of the playoffs — or perhaps it’s just a testament to my love for good storytelling. Either way, I’m a sucker for a good sports narrative. The trade rumors and stats all serve larger storylines; and with every player’s thinly-veiled tweet and every pundit’s rushed analysis, the sports folklore is fortified, the athlete further deified. I live for these moments of mythologizing, when a player’s history is written and rewritten in accordance with their results. In the Internet age, when every professional athlete can have both a Twitter account and a podcast, it’s easier than ever to see these people not just as players, but also as personalities.
Kawhi Leonard is the stoic NBA star who resists the machinery of sports narrative. At a time when players have seemingly endless opportunities to become celebrities outside of the…
