The 27-year-old made his Raptors debut last night as Toronto saw off the Cleveland Cavaliers 116-104 at the Scotiabank Arena.
Leonard’s 24 points was second only to the 27 of Kyle Lowry off of nine-for-22 shooting.
The two-time Defensive Player of the Year, who the Raptors traded the popular DeMar DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs for in the summer, also added 12 rebounds as part of a double-double.
The Raptors are banking on Leonard’s influence improving them in the post-season having been swept by Cavs, who then had LeBron James, in the Eastern Conference semi-finals last year.
And while not everything fell for Leonard on his opening night, Nurse thinks Leonard is going to have a big influence on his team throughout the 2018-19 season.
He told reporters: “I thought Kawhi created a lot of opportunities for himself.
“But again he looks, I don’t know – I think there’s some of those nights where a lot of those are going to go in and he’s going to parade a lot more to the free-throw line.
“I thought they roughed him up pretty good and he only shot six free-throws so you see the ability is there for him to get shots.
“I think some nights there’s going to be some big numbers.”
On Toronto’s performance overall, Nurse added: “I think we saw some spurts of some pretty good play but it wasn’t the prettiest painting.
“There were a lot of whistles, a lot of stoppages, we sent them to the line a little bit too much and gave up a few too many offensive rebounds.
“It was kind of a stop-start game. But there were some really good spurts when we broke it open and things.
“We’ve got some room for improvement that’s for sure.”
Leonard was pulled over by TSN afterwards and thanked Raptors fans for their support despite the widespread anger over the summer at the manner in which DeRozan was sent packing.
The former Finals MVP said on his first outing since January 13th: “It felt great because we got the win tonight. We’ve just got to keep going from here.
“We did a lot of mistakes tonight, but we’ve just got to keep building off this game.
“I thought it [the crowd] was great. They had great energy tonight, made a good push for us in that fourth quarter when we had no energy.
“I loved it tonight, it was just about coming out here and playing and seeing all the love and support.”