Bad luck has hit the Los Angeles Clippers organization. The Clippers superstar and two-time Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard will sit out the beginning of the regular season and is sidelined indefinitely, ESPN’s senior NBA insider Shams Charania and Ohm Youngmisuk reported Thursday. Leonard will reportedly move forward with his rehabilitation program as he battles through chronic inflammation in his right knee.
Asked about Leonard’s status at practice Wednesday, Clippers assistant coach Brian Shaw said, “That’s not a question for me,” reported by ClutchPoints’ Tomer Azarly.
Shaw went on to say: “We’re out here. He has not been a part of what we’ve been doing on a daily basis. I know the kind of company line has been that we’re going to be patient with him. So, he’s doing everything that he can to rehab it and strengthen that knee on his own, with our medical staff, and we’re just dealing with the guys that we have.”
Earlier this week, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue told the media that Leonard would not take the court in Thursday’s preseason finale, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Broderick Turner. Lue said that he was “not sure” if Leonard would be available when the 82-game marathon, called the regular-season kicks off.
Lue told reporters the plan for Leonard is to “continue to keep rehabbing, keep getting better and keep checking the boxes.”
None of this is new, but it does not contradict what team president Lawrence Frank said last month.
“The timing is all going to basically depend on how his knee responds to each phase,” Frank told reporters at a press conference on September 24. “No one has a crystal ball. We’re trending in a really, really good direction. I know he’s super determined to have a really, really great year, but the timing — I think, when it comes to your body and your health, I don’t think you put timeframes on it. I think you just have to respond to how he responds.”
Frank said at that point that the swelling in Leonard’s knee was “almost gone” and that the six-time All-Star wanted to “participate in everything at training camp.”
The team had decided to “hold him back from drill work and really focus on strengthening,” Frank said, “’cause the goal is to get him 100% so he can have a great season, not just this year but for many years. We’ll have a detailed plan, step by step, kind of having objective measures to go from one phase to the next.”
The ultimate goal, Frank said, was to avoid putting themselves in the same position they found themselves in at the end of the 2023 campaign. Leonard played in 68 of the Clippers’ first 74 regular-season games last year but had to miss their final eight because of the inflammation in his knee. Leonard was then desperate to come back for their first-round series against Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks, and, while his knee was in in “a really, really good place” when he suited up for Game 2, it rapidly got to a point “where it wasn’t manageable,” Frank said. This time around, they want to take all the precautions that are necessary in hopes that they can manage the issue all season and into the playoffs: “We’re in a really good place, but we want to keep it in a good place.”
Embed from Getty ImagesLater that day, The Athletic came out with a reported that Leonard had undergone a procedure on his knee in May. Leonard joined Team USA for its pre-Olympic training camp in Las Vegas in July, but USA Basketball’s Grant Hill replaced him with Derrick White of the Boston Celtics.
Leonard tore the ACL in his right knee in the 2021 playoffs and missed the entire 2021-22 season as a result. Then to add insult to injury, he then tore the meniscus in his right knee in the 2023 playoffs.
Last season, Leonard made the All-NBA Second Team and balled out averaging 23.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 34.3 minutes. Prior to the knee inflammation down the stretch, it appeared that he might get through a full season without a significant injury issue for the first time since 2020, his first year with the Clippers. The way the Clippers have mapped this out, they are merely trying to maximize the chances of that happening in 2024-25. At least at the beginning of the season, though, the Clippers will have to make up for an irreplaceable void in the lineup, and that will be harder than it used to be after letting Paul George walk out the door in free agency. He is now with the Philadelphia 76ers. You can expect former Slam Dunk champion Derrick Jones Jr. and Terance Mann to get the toughest defensive assignments and James Harden and Norman Powell to carry the load on their shoulders offensively.
