Playing at King High School in Riverside, California, Kawhi Leonard didn't get a lot of scholarship offers, with big-time college programs thinking he was a 'tweener.' (Getty)

Tim Sweeney grew more perplexed every day.

Nobody else seemed to see what he did in the best player he ever coached, and Sweeney couldn’t figure out why.

It was fall 2008, six years before Kawhi Leonard would be named NBA Finals MVP, eight years before he’d make his first All-Star game and 11 years before he’d unveil his first signature shoe. At the time, the long-armed forward was still merely trying to prove he was good enough to play high-level college basketball.

As Leonard began his senior year at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, he didn’t hold a single scholarship offer from a major-conference program. The few then-Pac-10 coaches who had showed interest treated him like a fallback option because they feared he was too short to flourish in the post but not skilled enough to thrive on the perimeter.

Leonard was just as underappreciated by media scouting services as he was by college coaches. Voters in longtime scout Frank Burlison’s prestigious “Best in the West” rankings pegged Leonard as just the 28th best high school senior in the western portion of the country, behind a whole bunch of prospects who would never sniff the NBA.

“It was really bizarre,” Sweeney said. “He was already a really good player by that time, but he was always overlooked. I remember calling some of my coaching friends in the college ranks about him, but most of them weren’t interested.”

It wasn’t until March 7, 2009, that Leonard forced the basketball world to take notice.

That was the day that King got a crack at star-laden Mater Dei, the nation’s top-ranked high school basketball team. That was the day Leonard spearheaded a memorable upset and offered a glimpse of the player he would one day become. That was the day college basketball coaches across the western seaboard took a collective gulp and wondered, “Why did we pass on this kid?”

Kawhi the gym rat

College coaches shouldn't feel too bad about underestimating Leonard. Even his first high school coach didn't fully recognize how good the gangly young forward would be.

When Leonard missed basketball tryouts his freshman year because his mother was out of town and he couldn’t get a ride, Canyon Springs High School coach Jeff Stovall refused to give him a special exception. Leonard instead played only football that year, putting his famously massive hands to use as a receiver and ball-hawking free safety.

“The coach was really strict and he didn’t know anything about Kawhi,” said Steven Mallory, Leonard’s friend and former high school teammate. “Everybody was trying to tell him about Kawhi, and he just wasn't hearing it.”

Leonard didn’t decide to focus exclusively on basketball until one of his soon-to-be mentors instilled confidence in him that he had a future in the sport. After refereeing one of Leonard’s games during his summer break from college, Pepperdine guard Marvin Lea approached the unpolished but gifted forward and told him he had a chance to someday earn a college scholarship.

That was all Leonard needed to hear to dedicate himself to basketball. He made the varsity team at Canyon Springs as a sophomore, emerging as a part-time starter but seldom getting the chance to handle the ball on the perimeter or to play a feature role.

At the end of his sophomore year, Leonard decided he was done with Canyon Springs, wanting to find a more established program that would offer him a bigger platform to be seen by college coaches and a better opportunity to develop his perimeter game. As a result, he transferred to nearby King, the Riverside basketball power where Lea won a state title in 2002.

Sweeney insists he sensed Leonard was something special soon after the quiet, introverted forward arrived at King. In one of Leonard’s first open-gym sessions the summer before his junior year, he left his new coach awestruck with his disruptiveness on defense and his ability to rebound outside his area.

“When he showed up, I was like, ‘Holy s---,’” Sweeney said. “I called my dad and I said, ‘You need to get down here right now. I think we may have a future NBA player.’ ”

The success Leonard enjoyed at King wasn’t merely a product of his talent. He also blossomed because of a tireless work ethic instilled in him years earlier by his father.

On summer days, Mark Leonard would bring his young son to the popular Compton hand-wash car wash he owned and put him to work scrubbing and detailing vehicles. Anytime Kawhi’s work didn’t meet his father’s standards, Mark would instruct him to start over again and fix it.

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