Suddenly, Kawhi Leonard is in the news

Kawhi Leonard, just 23-years old, has played an incredible stretch of basketball since he posted the first of six-straight 20-point games on February 28th against the Phoenix Suns. A fantastic performance on Sunday night against the Golden State Warriors has the national media scrambling to inform everyone of the terror that is Kawhi Leonard. He tied his career-high in points (26,) held Stephen Curry scoreless after Curry had just scored 13-straight for his team on five possessions, and finished a career-high seven steals in just 24 minutes. His final line was impressive,  26-5-3-7-0, and while it did come in limited minutes, it's just one of many great lines he's posted over the past 18 games.

There's the 25-8-4-1-3 against Denver, 24-11-1-5-1 against Toronto, 24-9-7-1-1 against Cleveland, 20-10-7-4-0 at Atlanta, and the 22-9-3-4-2 at Miami. The kid's on fire.

Here's some of the articles that Kawhi has inspired over the past couple of days:

Ben Golliver at Sports Illustrated writes (about setting career highs in points, fga and usage rate,) "It must be noted that Leonard is a key driver of that individual progress, rather than simply a system recipient."

Yaron Weitzman of SB Nation writes that we should be very afraid of Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs.

Zito Madu claims that Kawhi ruins everything and that "the best thing we can say about the San Antonio Spurs' emerging star is that he makes the players we love completely miserable."

I made a little video of Kawhi's seven steals against the Dubs.

Bleacher Report and USA Today make cases for Kawhi as Defensive Player of the Year

Kawhi tells ESPN's Mark Stein that he "feels good about myself" and that he's "very confident" that the Spurs can make a third-straight Finals run in a video interview.

If you're looking for even more words about Kawhi, be sure to check out Michael Erler's recent pair of pieces on Whi: How Kawhi wrecked the Cavaliers defense and Kawhi's defensive playmaking is fueling the Spurs offense.