Swanson: Kawhi Leonard-Kevin Durant duel is a dream matchup

PHOENIX — Choose your fighter.

Durantula or the Klaw?

One of the silkiest scorers in a sport’s history? Or one of its coldest and most clinical performers?

Kevin Durant or Kawhi Leonard?

Two two-time NBA champions. Two two-time NBA Finals MVPs.

And first-round foes.

This No. 4-vs.-No. 5 Western Conference playoff matchup between the Phoenix Suns and Clippers is giving matchup-for-the-ages energy heading back to L.A. tied 1-1, essentially a five-game series headlined by two of the best players on the planet.

In the Suns’ 123-109 victory in Game 2 on Tuesday night at Footprint Center, Durant played 44 minutes and contributed a cool 25 points. Leonard finished with 31 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in 38 minutes.

This series pits the two for the first time since they met in a regular-season game in 2019 and for just the 36th time all-time. Not nearly often enough. If only we could turn off injuries.

In Game 2 on Tuesday, as the future Hall of Famers faced each other in the playoffs for a 22nd time, finally healthy and hearty, and they did what they do: Hooped.

Leonard dunked and then dunked again. Durant sank unguardable jumpers over the outstretched fingertips of 7-foot center Ivica Zubac. At halftime, both had 16 points of their team’s 59 points.

Leonard rattled in 3-pointers. Durant hit none from deep, and none at the rim, but he was 10 for 15 on 2s, ever the midrange murderer.

Leonard pirouetted and hit a one-hander. Durant glanced a bank shot off the backboard and in, his presence alone helping free up Suns All-Star Devin Booker, who had a game-high 38 points.

This delectable Kawhi-vs.-KD duel is a Harvard case study in contrasting exceptionalism. A museum-quality display of how two people can at once play the same game and completely different games.

One of these guys is a mood ring, a painter working with infinite shades.

The other is black and white, sticking to the script, playing it just like he rehearsed it. Improvise if you must, he’s hitting his marks and he’s hitting his shots – which added up to a game-high 38 points in the Clippers’ 115-110 Game 1 victory.

One is nearly 7 feet tall, sinewy and slippery, swooping. The Slim Reaper.

The other is 6-7 and muscle-bound, shoulders as broad as a Chevy Tahoe. A Terminator.

But also: Mortal.

In the 2017 Western Conference finals between Durant’s Golden State Warriors and Leonard’s San Antonio Spurs, the latter was sidelined after suffering a sprained ankle in Game 1. And in the 2019 NBA Finals, when the Warriors took on Leonard’s Toronto Raptors, Durant was felled by a torn Achilles tendon in the opener.

This season, his first since a torn anterior cruciate ligament ended his 2021 postseason in the middle of the second round, Leonard played just 52 of 82 games, missing time for an assortment of human reasons: a sprained ankle, illness, personal reasons and, of course, maintenance, rest and recovery.

Durant is finishing in Phoenix what he started in Brooklyn, closing out a season in which he played only 47 games, sidelined otherwise with knee and ankle issues.

Those foibles notwithstanding, both come with superhuman efficiency. Durant is a career 49.9% shooter. Leonard, 49.5%. On Tuesday, Leonard went 11 for 20. Durant was 10 for 19.

Off the court, though, Durant, 34, is downright loquacious, eager to wax poetic on his podcast about basketball, and also music, fashion, culture, etc.

“I wanted to tell my experience in real-time to the people that wanted to know about it, basically,” Durant told The Athletic this month. “That’s what I wanted as a fan of the game: I wanted to hear my favorite players and coaches and people talk about their experience. So, it’s something I just wanted to get into. Whoever was following me, I just wanted to give an in-depth look at how I’m feeling at the time.”

Leonard, 31, isn’t interested in pulling back the curtain even an inch. At a practice once, a reporter asked Leonard what Christmas Eve looked like at his house. He wouldn’t divulge: “Private. I don’t discuss that with you guys.”

If there’s zip zero zilch wasted movement with Leonard, there are even fewer words spared.

Leave it up to his teammates to say what such sensational silence sounds like: “He’ll drop 40 with no emotions,” Clippers guard Brandon Boston Jr. said. “Won’t talk to anyone, won’t even (fist-pump). I love it.”

“Poise,” forward Robert Covington said. “Poise.”

The Clippers will lean into that calm, that quiet self-belief on Thursday as they try to hold court at home, the best-of-seven series squared against a favored Suns team, which figures to have taken back the edge, although the Clippers do have home-court advantage.

“We’re in a good place,” Leonard said after the Clippers’ quiet locker room had all but cleared out. “We split on the road, so we gotta go back home and try to protect our home floor.”

Boardman vs. Easy Money Sniper, Part III, Thursday night at Crypto.com Arena.

A duel to be savored and appreciated – and which the NBA will park on NBA TV, counter-programming to Game 3 of the Northern California grudge match between the Sacramento Kings and Warriors.

An airball, scheduling-wise, maybe, but no matter where KD-Kawhi happens – prime-time broadcast television or playground blacktop – it’s basketball at its most different. At its finest.