Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard has a procedure on his right knee during the offseason, per Shams Charania. It is the same knee that kept Leonard out for the final four games of L.A.’s first-round playoff loss the Mavericks and got him replaced on the Team USA Olympic roster in July. Clippers executive Lawrence Frank said on Tuesday that Leonard could miss the start of the 2024-25 season.
Charania reports that Leonard will be “limited to strengthening his knee to start training camp, but team officials are optimistic about his progress.”
“His right knee, the swelling has significantly gone down. It’s almost gone,” Frank told reporters. “He wants to participate in everything in training camp but we’re gonna hold him back from drill work and really focus on strengthening because 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, have objective measures to go from one phase to the next but he’s super determined, super excited, and can’t wait to get started.”
So here’s the deal: Kawhi Leonard is hurt, again, and the Clippers are, yet again, optimistic. Stop me when you’ve heard this before. Last January, the Clippers signed Leonard to a three-year, $153M extension, and that decision is looking worse by the day.
It looked bad when he couldn’t finish the playoffs. It looked worse when he couldn’t play in the Olympics. And now we’re finding out he had a previously unreported surgery on the same knee in which he has torn his ACL and meniscus.
It’s sad, but the simple truth is that banking north of $150M on Leonard to be healthy for a team that has already lost Paul George and is now leaning on James Harden to be a superstar, and also stay healthy, is just bad basketball business.
Now, there is actual business to consider here. The Clippers are opening a new arena this year and they didn’t want to do it with a rebuilding team. So they signed Leonard. And now they’re possibly going to be opening this new arena with Harden as the marquee name, and they’re going to be paying Leonard through probably a lot of future injuries, too.
