There's no moment too big for Kawhi Leonard

MILWAUKEE — With five minutes to go in Game 5, the Milwaukee Bucks game operations prompted fans to sing “Don’t Stop Believing,” which only felt appropriate because despair was dawning on the biggest game of the season. The jumbotron scanned for takers, but only found shots of distressed Bucks fans stuck in the throes of inevitability.

Kawhi Leonard was halfway through cutting out the hearts of every Bucks fan in Wisconsin. All season, the Bucks rode a reliable formula and one singular star to the best record in the league, but having the best player in the series trumped home court advantage. When all the chips were down, Leonard delivered the best quarter of playoff basketball ever played in a Toronto Raptors uniform and secured a 3-2 series lead in the Eastern Conference Finals.

“I'm not afraid of the moment,” Leonard said of his performance. “I enjoy it.”

That moment is always the here and now. He never gets too high, nor does he get too low. For a man of very few words, Leonard means everything he says, and he’s preached the same message all season. He stated at his introductory press conference last September that, “If you look into the future you’ll trip on the present,” and that mantra stayed with him through an otherwise demoralizing loss in Game 2 to the Bucks, where he flatly stated, “To Toronto for Game 3” after being asked where the Raptors were headed.

Staying locked in allowed Leonard to pour in 15 points in the fourth quarter. He opened the frame by picking off an errant pass and taking it the length of the floor for a layup with two Bucks draped on his back. Leonard then roasted Khris Middleton in 1-on-1 coverage, which forced Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer to change to a switching scheme. That too failed, as Leonard nailed two 3s right in Brook Lopez’s eye. So out of sheer necessity, Budenholzer then had the Bucks double and even triple team Leonard, to which he found Marc Gasol up top and Fred VanVleet twice in each corner for a trio of 3s.

“They were sending two or three bodies at him and kind of tilting the floor and making sure guys were loaded on him. He was making the right passes, and we made some shots for him tonight ... The game he played tonight, 35, 9 and 7 was a pretty good game. It's a pretty good game on the big stage and on the road. “Superstar. Superstar,” Kyle Lowry said of Leonard after the game.

Leonard imbued the Raptors with a sense of purpose on every possession, while the Bucks fell apart at the seams. While his counterpart in Giannis Antetokounmpo faded from focus, Leonard went about his business as usual. Milwaukee subsisted in the fourth on fluky 3s and erroneous foul shots, while the Raptors went to Leonard time and time again to create good shots. Leonard stayed in the moment, while the moment got to Milwaukee and they started making mistakes.

The best defensive rebounding team in the league allowed the Raptors to secure five extra possessions in the fourth, including on a triple where Leonard collected his own rebound before getting pushed out of bounds, and on a crucial possession where Gasol came up with the loose ball against Lopez to earn another two free throws. After Gasol split the pair, Eric Bledsoe raced down the floor without anywhere to go, and out of desperation he dumped it to Malcolm Brogdon in the corner where he promptly lost the ball after being hounded by Pascal Siakam.

Antetokounmpo didn’t even touch the ball on the most important possession of the season for the Bucks, nor did Budenholzer have the wherewithal to call timeout to set up a good shot. And on the ensuing possession with the Raptors up three, the Bucks sent three defenders to trap Leonard below half court, which led to an uncontested dunk for Pascal Siakam that effectively finished the game. Leonard again stayed calm, as he floated a perfect pass between four Bucks defenders to beat the trap.

“Experience helps a lot. You know, just from my input, I've been here before. I've been to the Finals, and it's pretty much nothing new that I'm seeing out there,” Leonard said. “You've just got to have fun with it and enjoy it. Like I told them tonight, we were down 10, I told them to enjoy the moment and embrace it, and let's have fun and love it. This is why we're here.”

And so the series returns to Toronto for Game 6 with a shot at the first Finals appearance in franchise history. But staying true to his character, Leonard didn’t allow himself any latitude to revel his performance. When asked how the Raptors would win four straight to close out the Bucks on Saturday in the walk-off interview on TNT, Leonard as always, stayed in the moment.

“I don’t know. I haven’t done it yet. We’re taking it one game at a time,” Leonard said.

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