Los Angeles Clippers are your 2023 NBA champions

The 2022-23 NBA season is almost upon us, but Hot Take SZN is here, and at the end of another eventful offseason we will see how close to the sun we can fly and still stand the swelter of these viewpoints.

It has been more than three years since Kawhi Leonard led the Toronto Raptors to the NBA championship, cementing himself as the best player alive, and 16 months since we last saw him play basketball in earnest.

Why would anyone think, after losing two prime seasons to injury, the two-time Finals MVP can reach those heights again and lead the Los Angeles Clippers to their first title? Because they are built to get him there.

Kawhi Leonard, apex predator

Leonard has played 178 regular season games since former Golden State Warriors center Zaza Pachulia stepped under his left ankle midway through Game 1 of the 2017 Western Conference finals — an average of 36 games over the past five seasons. He missed all but nine games of his 2017-18 campaign for the San Antonio Spurs with right quadriceps tendinopathy and the entirety of last season to a partial right ACL tear.

In between, the Raptors load managed him to the playoffs in 2019, splitting back-to-backs and building in a handful of longer rest periods throughout the regular season. He proceeded to submit one of the greatest postseason performances in league history, averaging a 31-9-4 (49/38/88 shooting splits) and playing top-fight defense en route to avenging his 2017 loss to the Warriors and securing his second Finals MVP award.

Leonard joined the Clippers in 2019 free agency, recruiting Paul George to form one of the most formidable wing combinations the NBA has ever seen. Then, the world turned on its axis. The Clippers were in second place in the West when COVID-19 shut the league down in March 2020. They reconvened four months later in Orlando, where Leonard averaged a 33-10-5 to beat the Dallas…