Kawhi Leonard
American basketball player (born 1991)
Kawhi Anthony Leonard ( kə-WHY; born June 29, 1991) is an American professional basketball player for the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A two-time NBA champion and two-time Finals MVP, he is a seven-time All-Star and seven-time member of the All-NBA Team (including three first-team selections). Nicknamed the "Claw" or "Klaw" for his ball-hawking skills and exceptionally large hands, Leonard is often regarded as one of the greatest two-way players in NBA history, earning seven All-Defensive Team selections and winning Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2015 and 2016. In 2021, he was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.
Leonard played two seasons of college basketball for San Diego State. He was selected 15th overall by the Indiana Pacers in the 2011 NBA draft before being traded to the San Antonio Spurs on draft night.
With the Spurs, Leonard won an NBA championship in 2014 and was named the Finals Most Valuable Player. After seven seasons with the Spurs, Leonard was traded to the Toronto Raptors in 2018. In his only season with the Raptors in 2019, he led the Raptors to their first NBA championship and won his second Finals MVP award (one of only three players to win Finals MVP with multiple teams, along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James). He subsequently moved to his hometown of Los Angeles and signed with the Los Angeles Clippers as a free agent in July 2019.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kawhi Leonard” as american basketball player (born 1991). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american basketball player (born 1991). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q926248. VIAF identifies the subject as 1323150325567210090009. The Library of Congress control number is n2017048363. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2015, 2016 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kawhi Leonard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.