The San Antonio Spurs were dealt a massive blow in game one of the Western Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors on Monday as all-star forward Kawhi Leonard suffered an ankle injury that will rule him out of, at minimum, Game 2 on Wednesday, the 17th of May.
Leonard, who had led the Spurs to a 23-point lead early in the 3rd quarter, went up for a jump shot and was fouled by Warriors big man Zaza Pachulia who stepped into Leonard’s landing zone forcing him to land on Pachulia’s foot and roll his ankle. Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was not happy with the incident, claiming that Pachulia’s act was intentional, sighting his streaky history with these types of occurrences.
With Leonard off the floor, the Warriors then went on to outscore the Spurs by 25 points in the rest of the game, claiming a thrilling 2 point victory to go 1-0 up in the series. It’s safe to say that the Spurs would have held on for the win if Kawhi hadn’t have gone off, so throwing away a possible 1-0 lead and a home court advantage would be heartbreaking for the Spurs players.
With Kawhi out for game two, it’s likely that the Warriors will go up 2-0 here, however, the line as opened up at as high as 14 points. Popovich is the master of the mid-series adjustment, and the Spurs have regularly claimed massive regular season wins when Popovich decides to rest his best players. We wouldn’t be surprised if the Spurs can cover the line here, especially as they will be playing fired up after the ‘intentional’ injury to Kawhi.
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With Kawhi out, there’s a lot of scenarios that could play out as the Spurs surrounding core attempt to pick up his slack. The main benefactor looks to be Jonothan Simmons, who is the next best defensive maychup for Kevin Durant. The small forward played 26 minutes on Sunday and that should jump up to mid-30s at least, while LaMarcus Aldridge will most likely pick up a lot of the offensive duties.
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