Leonard has career night in dominant Game 1 win over Sixers Kawhi Leonard scored 45 points – setting a new playoff career-best and tying his overall career-high – in Toronto’s dominant 108-95 win over Philadelphia in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals on Saturday night. Josh Lewenberg has more on Leonard's dominant performance.

Josh Lewenberg TSN Raptors Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO – The day began with an audible, a slight change to Kawhi Leonard’s rigid morning routine, which – either consciously or inadvertently – inconvenienced the visiting Philadelphia 76ers.

Generally, the Raptors don’t hold morning shootarounds at home. They opt for rest and have a closed walkthrough in the team’s old practice gym on the upper level of Scotiabank Arena a couple hours before the game instead. Saturday morning, ahead of their second-round series opener, was no different.

Even if his team decides not to shoot around, Leonard is still at the arena early. He spends about a half hour on the main court getting his work in, usually around 9:30 am.

On Saturday, Philadelphia was scheduled to shoot around on the main court at 11:00 am and had planned to do its media availability out there just before, at 10:30 am.

However, just as the Sixers bus pulled up to the arena at 10:25 am, Leonard calmly walked onto the court and started taking jumpers. Technically, the Raptors are entitled to use the court until 11:00 am. So, with a few assistant coaches and team staffers rebounding, Leonard spent the next 30 minutes shooting on the otherwise empty arena floor while Philly’s players sat in the visiting locker room and waited. Their media availability and their shootaround got pushed back.

Maybe the start of Leonard’s morning workout, about an hour later than usual, was a coincidence. But for a player that’s very much a creature of habit, as most of them are, that seems unlikely.

The implied message here was: this is my house.

That message was more or less the same when Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals tipped off nine hours later.

“He's a spectacular player and he had a spectacular night and he hit some spectacular shots,” Sixers guard J.J. Redick said of Leonard, who scored 45 points – setting a new playoff career-best and tying his overall career-high – in Toronto’s dominant 108-95 win over Philadelphia.

“I said this morning, he's a superstar. He's as good as there is in the NBA at generating his own shot and making tough shots. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to 'em.”

Leonard had it going from the jump. He and teammate Pascal Siakam combined to score 23 of the Raptors’ first 25 points, doing so on just 13 shots. With four-time All-NBA defender Jimmy Butler guarding Leonard, the Raptors forward got wherever he wanted on the floor. He hit tough shots. He hit open shots. He drilled threes and finished through contact. Whatever Butler did, it didn’t matter.

“That was [another] big-time performance at both ends,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said. “I just like the force he’s playing with at both ends, but especially when he’s getting the ball. He’s pushing it up the floor, he’s punching the gaps with force, he’s determined to get to spaces. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but that was pretty cool to watch tonight.”

Leonard and Siakam finished the first quarter with 17 points apiece, both of them on 7-of-9 shooting, but Leonard would go on to score at least nine points in each of the next three quarters.

As good as Leonard was against Orlando in Round 1, he looked even better in dismantling a far more intimidating opponent.

“They were unbelievable,” Kyle Lowry said of Leonard and Siakam, who finished with 29 points. “Offensively and defensively, they were good. We're the type of team that everybody can step up. And those two guys are our options right now. Kawhi was just in the zone. And he probably could've had more but he facilitated some and made some shots. And Pascal could've probably had more. But we're just a good team and we don't care who has the success. We just want the team to be successful.”

On Friday, Raptors reserve Fred VanVleet noted how Leonard would break the Magic’s spirit with his one-man runs in the opening series, and sure enough, here he was again.

Toronto took an early lead, which grew as large as 14 in the first half. When Philadelphia went on a run in the second quarter, cutting its deficit to one point, Leonard scored six of the next nine points, stretching the Raptors’ lead back to 10. When the Sixers got that lead back down to four in the third, Leonard helped fuel a 13-0 Raps run. Philly never got back within 10 points again.

Leonard hit a driving floater to put the Raptors up by 20 points with just over four minutes remaining, setting a new playoff career-high of 45 points and matching his scoring total from the January 1 win over Utah earlier this season. He checked out moments later.

His previous postseason career-high of 43 points came with San Antonio back in 2017 against current teammate Marc Gasol’s Memphis Grizzles.

“Yeah, I remember that,” Gasol said with a laugh. “Well it’s nice now that he’s getting his career-high against somebody else and I’m on his side.”

Leonard logged 38 minutes on the night, shooting a remarkably efficient 16-for-23 and grabbing 11 rebounds. He said he wasn’t tempted to stay in and chase 50 points, which would have tied the franchise playoff record set by Vince Carter in 2001, the last time Toronto faced Philadelphia in the postseason. In fact, he actually wanted to come out earlier. His work was already done.

“I was trying to get out the game before it got to that point,” Leonard said. “We were up 20 points with five minutes left I was already looking at the bench trying to get [Nurse] to take me out of the game. Individual stuff is not big for me. It’s great when you do it and you can win, but my focus is on winning the ball game. That’s why we’re playing this game. We’re not playing this game so we can score 50 or 40 points. We’re all on this team so that we can hear ‘Raptors Win’ at the end of the day.”

The Raptors entered the night with an infamous 2-14 record in Game 1s. But as Leonard, his coach and many of his teammates have repeated, over and over again these last few weeks, that’s in the past. That history doesn’t belong to this specific Raptors team, it’s also not something they concern themselves with.

Yes, they finally won a Game 1. But there was no celebration in the locker room when it was over, no popping of champagne. Their temperament was not dissimilar to the mood in the room after their Game 1 loss to Orlando a couple weeks earlier, or their series clinching Game 5 win. They were business-like. It’s just one win, one more step towards their stated goal of coming out of the East and making it to their first NBA Finals.

As Lowry noted on Friday, Leonard’s level-headed approach has rubbed off on the team. He’s been there before and the others are wisely following his lead. ​