 The Michael Jordan Kawhi Leonard comparison at age 28. The doc is that he plays both ends of the court and he makes the always the right read on. He is the most like Jordan that we've seen. Not that he is Jordan or anything like that, but he's the most like him. Big hands, post game, can finish, great leaper, great defender, in between game. If you beat him to the spot, bumps you off, and then you add his three-point shooting. Kawhi Leonard, a fierce yet quiet competitor, a textbook player on how to play the game of basketball, an elite defender, but a proven scorer, someone who gets better each season, and leads his team to victory on the biggest stages. Michael Jordan, a fierce and loud competitor. Not afraid to talk trash to anybody and throw it in your face. He is the textbook player. Everyone wants to be like Mike. From the game winners to the dunks, the defense to the layups, he's the guy. There's no one better. This video is actually somewhat of a more in-depth video to help with another video that will drop sometime this week. That video looks at current NBA players compared to NBA legends, and I'll be honest with you, in that video I will compare Kawhi Leonard to Michael Jordan, but not in terms of domination and success, more so in terms of play style, but I feel that in that video when I drop it, I'm going to have a lot of questions and comments about why I would compare Kawhi Leonard to the greatest of all time. So this video is a more in-depth video to break it down, so in that video I can refer to this video and there will be no misunderstandings. I won't have time to cover everything in that video, so I thought I'd make a more in-depth video to cover all parts of the Kawhi MJ comparison before that video drops later this week, as I believe that anytime you compare someone to the greatest of all time, you have to be very precise, very in-depth, and I hope that this video will do that. With that said, if you want to see that video, please drop a like to support this video right here, I put a lot of effort into matching, finding and piecing all those Kawhi and MJ clips together, so let's aim for 2300 likes. If you're new around here and you enjoy NBA content every single week, be sure to hit that subscribe button and let's get into the video. This video is not a who's better than who video, because that isn't even an argument just yet, it's clearly Mike, but the way that Kawhi Leonard is playing and the potential chance that he has of winning his third NBA championship, third finals MVP, and back-to-back NBA championship this season alone just shows that he's only getting closer to being one of the greatest players to ever play this game, and one of the most unique talents that we have ever seen. So here's a comparison between Kawhi Leonard and MJ at age 28. People tend to talk about how Jordan was always an elite player, straight from his rookie season, but he took his time to really figure out winning. Once he figured that out, well it was over for the rest of the league. MJ had to figure out how to beat the Detroit Pistons, which he stated as much as he hated them, they are one of the reasons that Jordan is Jordan and became a six-time NBA champion and an even better player. It wasn't even until his side kicks Scotty Pippin started to really emerge that the two would end up figuring it all out, at once they figured it out they never looked back. But when you break it all down, Jordan would only win his first ring and finals MVP during his age 27 season, which was in the 1990-1991 season, which he turned 28 but in February and won those in June. It provides you with a bit of context as to how Jordan didn't win immediately and took some time to figure it all out. I mean 27 years old and in his seventh season in the league, that's typically quite late for a star player to win their first NBA championship. Kawhi Leonard had won by age 22, Magic had won by age 20, Larry Bird had won by 24, basically every player in most top 10 lists had a ring before Jordan did at the age that he won his first. LeBron in a sense was reasonably late too as he also won at 27 years old, but he had already made it to the NBA finals twice beforehand, unlike MJ who had never made it to the NBA finals. My point being is that whilst we can compare Kawhi Leonard to MJ at age 28, it's very clear that at this point in Jordan's career he had just figured out how to win alongside Scotty Pippin and Phil Jackson. Kawhi Leonard is in a unique situation where he didn't come into the league and dominate the same way that MJ did, but he was drafted into an organization that put him into a championship mindset immediately and Kawhi Leonard has never looked back. Whilst in San Antonio, Kawhi was able to work on his offensive game each and every year and come back more improved than it was the year prior and it was very clear he was watching film of Jordan and Kobe, he was being trained by Kobe and when you think about it Kobe took everything from Jordan too, which is why today the resemblance is uncanny. Kawhi Leonard's body type is different to Jordan and Kobe, Kawhi Leonard is 6 foot 8, weighs more, is stronger, that means he's able to match up against some of the bigger players in the league. Jordan typically only would guard the point guard shooting guards and sometimes small forwards and it wasn't until the 1919-1991 season where he would start to bulk up and get bigger and stronger to match the physicality of the NBA. Kawhi Leonard already had that build, he was already stronger and that allows him to match up against point guards shooting guards small forwards and even power forwards in the league and actually beat them. He's able to match up against LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Yannis Anterto Cumpo. But either way the resemblance is uncanny, Kawhi Leonard was already a proven elite defender straight from the draft, which already could have been compared with Jordan and Pippin's defense, especially because like Jordan, Kawhi has those massive hands, the unique situation that he was put in allowed him to capture two NBA championships along with two finals MVPs and two defensive player of the year awards before joining the Los Angeles Clippers this season. And now that he's part of the Los Angeles Clippers team who has a chance to make the NBA finals this season but not only for this season but for many seasons after, it's a scary sight to think about Kawhi Leonard dominating the NBA in the future. Especially as LeBron James is starting to get older and older every season, father time eventually catches up to everybody at some stage. Although the way that LeBron James is playing, I don't even know about that anymore. So let's start really comparing them. By June 30th of 2019, in terms of accolades that really and truly matter, Kawhi Leonard on his 28th birthday already had two rings, two finals MVPs and two defensive player of the year awards. On his 28th birthday, Michael Jordan had zero rings, zero finals MVPs and one defensive player of the year award, but he would go on to win the NBA finals that season and also win a finals MVP. Not to mention that he would continue this for three straight years and then retire, come back and do it all again three more times to finish off his career with six NBA championships. My point here is not to say that Kawhi Leonard is better than MJ at age 28 because he has more rings, more finals MVP and more defensive player of the year awards. I'm putting this information out there to showcase how Kawhi Leonard is reaching go to you faster than we could have ever imagined. So the main reason that you're here, you want to know if you can really compare MJ and Kawhi Leonard. Well in terms of a play comparison for this season, Kawhi Leonard is averaging 26.9 points, five assists, seven and a half rebounds, two steals, half a block shooting 37% from three and 46% from the field. Jordan at age 28 in the 1991-1992 NBA season was averaging 30 points, one block, 2.3 steals, six assists, six and a half rebounds, shooting 27% from three but only on 1.3 attempts and 51% from the field. The thing is Kawhi Leonard is doing this in 32 minutes whilst Jordan is doing this in 39 minutes per game. So whilst the per 36 stat can be a little bit misleading, I think this is the perfect time to really look at the per 36 stat based on the two plays and their differences in minutes per game. And when you look at per 36, Kawhi Leonard is averaging 30 points compared to MJ's 28 points. They both average nearly one block per game, they both average two steals per game, the exact same assists per game at 5.7. Kawhi Leonard averages more rebounds but you probably expect that as he plays more small forward. But even with Kawhi Leonard averaging more points, he's also taking many more three point attempts unlike MJ who only took 1.2. So in terms of stats at age 28, they match up quite well. But that does not mean I can compare MJ to Kawhi Leonard even though their stats are very similar. If I could compare anybody to Michael Jordan, I would choose Kawhi Leonard. The statement at first seems somewhat absurd but when you break it down entirely, it slowly narrows. I mean clearly Kawhi Leonard's playstyle is extremely similar to Jordan's but MJ was always a far better scorer and would religiously light teams up for 40 points, 50 points and sometimes even 60 points. Kawhi Leonard is not that type of scorer and whilst he may look similar to Jordan and his moves are that of Jordan and of course Kawhi, the way that Kawhi was to Jordan as well, Kawhi's ability is star talent, whilst Jordan's was god talent. Defensively though, Kawhi is probably the better defender, at this stage in his career he has more defensive play of the year awards and the stats back Kawhi's defense up as well. But if I were to compare the two, I'd say that Kawhi Leonard is a version of MJ, a version of Jordan that we saw similar to the number 45 Michael Jordan who returned in the 1994-1995 season. I mean when you look at the points per game you can see a similar stat in terms of what Kawhi Leonard averages. He goes on tears with 27 points, 21 points, 32, 55, 23, 37, 28, 21, 25, 29, 28, 31 points per game, an elite scorer even when MJ was returning out of retirement. He was also a very good defender, but he wasn't the god tier level MJ that we saw winning his NBA championships. This was Jordan that would eventually lose to Shaquille O'Neal and the Orlando Magic and that's how I visualized Kawhi Leonard's game as somebody who can definitely be defeated but also has the ability to drop points on any team any night whilst playing incredible defense. So when I go on to make my next video I will compare Kawhi Leonard to Michael Jordan, but now you know the type of comparison I'm making and you can understand the comparison even more so. This video was to prove and showcase what I mean when I make that comparison. With that said if you want to see that video please drop a like to support this video, I put a lot of effort finding, matching and piecing all these clips together so let's aim for 2300 likes if you're new around here and you enjoy NBA content every single week be sure to hit that subscribe button and I'll catch you guys in my next video. I am out, peace.