Kawhi Leonard was happy about the Toronto Raptors gutty, gritty double OT win in Game 3 of their series against the imposing Milwaukee Bucks. But Kawhi did not like how his teammate Serge Ibaka tried to pump up his Toronto teammates before the game. The Raptors were down 0-2 and faced a virtual must-win situation. Ibaka decided to seek out a good lesson from the past to show his teammates that the situation wasn’t dire, that they could win.
What history lesson did Ibaka choose? Ibaka decided to reference the 2012 Western Conference Finals when he was playing for a very talented OKC Thunder team (Durant, Harden, Westbrook) that had dropped the first two games of a playoff series before coming back to win. The OKC opponent in that series? Oh, that was the San Antonio Spurs. Leonard’s problem with Ibaka’s history lesson was that he and teammate Danny Green were on that Spurs team. “We really didn’t like that analogy,” Leonard admitted.
“Serge’s motivational tactic was to remind Kawhi and Danny of the time OKC came back from 0-2 deficit against the Spurs.” (via @william_lou) pic.twitter.com/uZvz4Y20Mc
— The Render (@TheRenderNBA) May 20, 2019
