Big Apple Time, Big Apple Time: Leonard, Harden deliver Clippers key road win

L.A. is 41-31 and back into 6th in the West.

(Photo credit: Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images)

There’s a very famous viral tweet from 2019 that outlines how Kawhi Leonard, then of the Toronto Raptors, once went to dinner with the San Antonio Spurs, his previous employer, and sat a bag of a dozen apples on the table at a team dinner, replying, “Apple time, apple time” before eating the 12 pieces of fruit with a knife and fork.

You'd be correct if you think it’d be unbelievable that Leonard would do this. It was just a satirical story. Nothing more, nothing less.

But none of that changed the fact that Leonard and the LA Clippers ate up the New York Knicks on Wednesday night in the Big Apple, proving once and for all that maybe the star forward and future Hall of Famer does enjoy apples after all.

It should be noted that Leonard has admitted he has an apple tree, so maybe time is a flat circle after all.

While it wasn’t with a knife and fork, but rather a precision mid-range jumper and deft work around the rim, Leonard turned the Knicks into his own feast with the 126-113 victory that moved the Clippers to 41-31 and back into sixth place in the daunting Western Conference.

Leonard finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists with no turnovers on 10-of-18 shooting in a season-high 41 minutes.

“He looks like how he’s supposed to look,” Clippers guard James Harden said after the game. “The more he looks like that, continues to look like that, we’ll feed off of him and vice versa. I’ll feed off him, he’ll feed off me, then [Ivica Zubac] gets involved, and then it just trickles down.”

Leonard scored 14 of his 27 in the fourth quarter as he helped the Clippers put away a Knicks team that has gone just 5-5 in the 10 games since losing star guard Jalen Brunson to a sprained right ankle in early March.

The win marked the seventh straight game and 13th out of the last 15 that Leonard scored at least 20 points. Leonard has averaged 24.3 points, 6.9 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 1.9 steals on a 59.7 TS% over that time.