![]() ![]() Promotion of piracy is prohibited here.The rules of reddit are always in effect do not dox users or post information that can lead to doxx do not call for brigades or witchhunts against subreddits or users do not post child pornography etc.From regret to self-regulation to redemption, in the span of 10.8 seconds. Ended up getting a soft touch and going in.” I just thought I had to put it up even higher than that. ![]() A couple possessions before that, I had the same kind of shot from three and ended up coming short. So I ended up finding a spot that I like, that I work on. I ended up catching it and just trying to get to a space so I could get a shot off. Remembering that moment, I knew I had some time to try to get some space rather than just catch-and-shoot the ball. So drew up the play again tonight and there was four seconds left. “So I just remembered that moment and knowing I had time, at least, to pump-fake or take a dribble. It was probably like three seconds,” Leonard said. “We ran a similar play during the Magic series, and I ended up just catching and shooting the ball. When Leonard walked up to the podium after hitting the first Game 7 buzzer-beater in NBA history, the man who usually gives up the bare minimum offered some rare insight into how the wheels turn behind the mind of the best player in the conference - and maybe the world. This is, after all, the guy who told reporters he was looking forward to returning to San Antonio - where he was inevitably going to be booed every time he touched the ball - because the experience might give him something new to learn. It’s that he filters emotion like he does information: productively and quickly. What’s impressive about Leonard isn’t that he’s emotionless. Things happen for a reason, I guess, and it went down.” “After that,” he continued, “I was just like, whatever play drew up, I'm about to get to my spot and shoot it. But he was, in his words, “very mad” that he missed the free throw and that he didn’t get back in transition defense. Public perception paints Leonard as emotionless, almost robotic, an animatronic and even-keeled curation of perfect basketball traits. The Sixers corralled the rebound, and, to make matters worse, Leonard crashed the boards instead of getting back on defense, allowing Jimmy Butler to surge up the floor for a game-tying layup. But he canned the first free throw and clanked the front iron on the second. Sunday night, Leonard found himself in the same situation: at the free-throw line, with 10.8 seconds remaining and a one-point lead. But with a two-point lead and 19.4 seconds left on the clock, he split them, giving Ray Allen and the Miami Heat the opening they needed to tie the game and complete one of the most improbable comebacks in Finals history in overtime. Six years ago, Leonard lined up at the free-throw line for two shots that could have sealed a championship for the San Antonio Spurs. Leonard’s shot didn’t only eradicate the Raptors’ tortured playoff past - it turned his own, both new and old, into ancient history. It’s hard to be the last man standing.”Įmbiid was the recipient of another kind of playoff torch, one Leonard knows all too well: a summer of regret. All the stuff that has to accrue over many months that will one day lead to the ability to one day be a champion. It’ll help give him greater clarity of what this time of the year represents. “As painful as it feels now, it’ll help him,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said. Kawhi Leonard and his teammates watch as the ball bounces around the rim before falling through as time expires Sunday in Game 7. Leonard leapfrogged back up, falling into his teammates’ arms, celebrating an Eastern Conference finals berth with a 92-90 victory, while a heartbroken Embiid crumbled into the arms of mentor-turned-opponent Marc Gasol. Like a grain of sand, the ball hit the back rim twice and dropped through the net. But Leonard put the Raptors on the right side of impossible. The ball bounced off the front of the rim again, and Leonard crouched to the floor, almost as though he was trying to will the ball to drop into the rim. When the ball bounced off the front of the rim and the buzzer sounded, Leonard and Embiid stood beside each other, melding into a crowd of onlookers that stared as so many fates hung in the balance: the Sixers, who made two blockbuster trades for the right to show Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris why they should be the ones paying them Leonard and the Raptors, who will have their free-agency conversation this July and the teammates and staffers who will feel the ripples of those decisions. ![]()
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