"In today's National Basketball Association (NBA), filled with flashy plays and look-at-me personalities, it was the quiet and humble Kawhi Leonard who orchestrated one of the greatest post-season runs in league history in 2019. It began with his impossible-to-believe, fadeaway buzzer-beater from the corner in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. That basket shoved Philadelphia out of the playoffs in the second round and instantly became one of the greatest shots in playoff history. It culminated with Leonard hauling his Toronto Raptors all the way to the NBA Finals, territory it had never traversed in franchise history, where the Raptors dethroned the mighty three-time champion Golden State Warriors in a six-game series where his play dripped with greatness. The obvious choice for Finals MVP, it marked the second time that Leonard had collected the prestigious honor, becoming just the 12th player in NBA history to win the award on multiple occasions. The 6 feet and 7 inches small forward joined a pantheon of first-name legends-Magic, Kobe, Michael, Shaq, and Hakeem, among others-who have done so. Leonard won it for the first time in 2014, where he strung together a spectacular stretch of games to lead San Antonio past an All-Star laden Miami Heat roster"--
