Players who have special skills rarely bust and Kawhi Leonard absolutely has two of those in terms of his rebounding and defense. Because his athletic profile is so encouraging, Leonard has the capacity to build upon those specific areas of strength to become more than just a niche player.

Leonard has far better pure ability than where is right now, but he clearly needs significant refinement of his skills, a better understanding of the game in general as well as his own game.

Without question, Leonard needs to improve his jumper. He has reportedly looked much better during workouts than he did during the season. Leonard would have far too much activity with his left hand on his shot and was severely lacking in touch. Even with a few adjustments to his fundamentals, Leonard would still need twice as many reps to become adequate in this area than a normal prospect.

Adding a dribble to his jumper makes Leonard an even more inaccurate shooter, which could be blamed at least partially on his humongous hands. His hands are so huge that they seem to grab a basketball out of thin air the way you or I might grab a nerf ball, but it does present a problem as a shooter. This is one of the major underlying and underreported problems to why big men so frequently struggle with their free throw shooting and is something Leonard will need to overcome.

Leonard is a good natural passer and while he doesn’t complete anything too complicated or imaginative, he has decent vision and a solid delivery.

He can trigger the break himself with the dribble out of a defensive rebound and his passing ability is of course valuable here.

Leonard may not be capable of completely breaking his man off the dribble in a pure ISO like the truly great perimeter scorers, but he can create his own shot at will. His athleticism and handle are plenty strong enough and it is merely a matter of whether he can begin to convert at an acceptable rate considering how far away his jumper remains.

Leonard will use a pre-dribble jab step and get where he wants to go by using his strength. From the wing or baseline, Leonard has the capacity to use this jab step or a shot fake to setup a dribble drive into the paint and hopefully to the rim where he

Most encouraging to his future offensively is his ability in the post. He has a strong pump fake that he uses frequently and also shows promising footwork with a little drop step. Leonard didn’t receive a ton of opportunities in the post, as teams played a lot of zone defense against San Diego State to counter against their athleticism.

While I see Leonard as being capable of developing into a defensive stopper, he was far from outstanding collegiately. He loses his man too easily in help defense, needing a better understanding of how to position himself. Leonard also needs to demonstrate a stronger commitment on that end of the floor.

Somewhat strangely, some of Leonard’s inexperience and lack of coordination that we see from him on offense carries over to the defensive end. When Leonard’s offensive acumen improves naturally over time, I expect to see his defense make a similar type of jump as a result of it.

Regardless of his limitations, Leonard will immediately be a physical force on defense and also greatly aide in his team’s chances of holding opponents to one shot per possession because of his rebounding.