LA Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank didn’t even want to just accept a query from the press Tuesday earlier than addressing Kawhi Leonard’s standing going into coaching camp.
Leonard, the two-time Finals MVP and a member of the NBA’s seventy fifth Anniversary Staff, has had every of the earlier 4 seasons ruined by accidents to his proper knee. Irritation within the knee prematurely ended Leonard’s 2024 common season, restricted him to solely two playoff video games and stored him from staying on the US Olympic males’s basketball workforce that received a gold medal.
Every week earlier than the Clippers start coaching camp in Hawaii, Frank declared the swelling in Leonard’s proper knee “has considerably gone down” and that the workforce would maintain Leonard out of drills to “actually give attention to strengthening” the joint to “get him at one hundred pc so he can have an amazing season — not simply this 12 months, however for a few years.”
Lawrence Frank on Kawhi Leonard pic.twitter.com/MZvQ3g5FWf
— Regulation Murray 💡 (@LawMurrayTheNU) September 24, 2024
The Athletic reported Tuesday that Leonard underwent a process on his knee in Might. That made it three proper knee operations in 4 years for Leonard. In 2021, the 33-year-old underwent surgical procedure to restore {a partially} torn ACL suffered within the West semifinals in opposition to the Utah Jazz. That damage value Leonard the prospect to play within the franchise’s solely Western Convention Finals look, and the surgical procedure value him the complete 2021-22 season, which ended with the Clippers shedding two Play-In Event video games.
When Leonard returned from the ACL tear to start the 2022-23 season, knee stiffness value him 25 days (12 video games) after the season’s first week. He ultimately bought robust sufficient to return to type, solely to tear his meniscus within the 2023 West quarterfinals in opposition to the Phoenix Suns and miss the ultimate three video games of the five-game collection.
The newest knee situation that first popped up for Leonard in early April remains to be an element virtually six months later. Do some fundamental math: Six months from now, the common season can be winding down. Will this be an element all 12 months? Frank is optimistic it received’t be however wouldn’t decide to Leonard being prepared for the workforce’s regular-season opener at Intuit Dome in opposition to the Suns on Oct. 23.
“I believe the timing is all going to rely on how his knee responds to every part,” Frank mentioned. “Nobody has a crystal ball. We’re trending in a very, actually good course. I do know he’s tremendous decided to have an amazing 12 months, however the timing in relation to your physique and your well being, I don’t suppose you set time frames on it. I believe you simply have to answer how he responds.”
Properly, pardon followers and followers of this franchise for feeling like they’ve been right here earlier than, particularly with Leonard. The season hasn’t even began but, and believing on this workforce requires a prescription.
To know the Clippers is to by no means be comfy with them for an prolonged interval. It’s really good to know transferring to a brand new area in a brand new metropolis with a brand new brand received’t change the inevitable anxiousness of investing consideration into this workforce. No, the Clippers aren’t the franchise that moved to Southern California in 1979 and from San Diego in 1984, which misplaced greater than 60 % of its video games in 23 seasons between 1981 and 2011.
Over the past 13 seasons, the Clippers have had a successful document annually, the NBA’s longest such lively streak. Frank made some extent to say the satisfaction of that streak initially and finish of Tuesday’s media availability. 9 of these seasons noticed the Clippers win at the very least 60 % of their video games, together with final 12 months’s 51-31 end that included a Pacific Division title. The goalposts have moved, and so the mark of disappointment isn’t failing to win regular-season video games however whether or not the Clippers fail to make a postseason run.
In some ways, final 12 months was the tip of an period. By November, the Clippers had 4 future Corridor of Famers on their roster who all might have been 2024 free brokers: Leonard, Paul George, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. When Leonard signed a three-year, $152.4 million extension in January, he turned the primary participant to determine himself because the face of Intuit Dome.
That workforce, sadly, peaked shortly after the ink dried on Leonard’s extension. George tabled his extension talks a month later. By March, head coach Tyronn Lue had to answer George calling the workforce comfortable.
“Yeah, we’re going to discover an id this 12 months,” Lue deadpanned Tuesday.
Harden’s efficiency declined after Westbrook went out with a damaged hand. Despite the fact that the Clippers toughened as much as end the common season, appropriately after Lue referred to as them out, Leonard was by no means at full energy once more.
That workforce doesn’t exist anymore. George will start his fifteenth NBA season with the Philadelphia 76ers on the biggest and longest contract he might have signed. Westbrook picked up his participant possibility, however the Clippers have been decided to maneuver on from him with George out of the image, and he was traded in a deal that allowed the Clippers to accumulate former lottery decide Kris Dunn.
The Clippers pivoted when George left, signing Derrick Jones Jr. from the defending Western Convention champion Dallas Mavericks and bringing again Nicolas Batum, who was traded final November to Philadelphia so the 76ers might purchase Harden. Earlier than free company, Harden signed a two-year deal that features a 2025 participant possibility. Lue additionally signed a long-awaited long-term extension.
There may be an overview of a successful workforce with the personnel Frank has put collectively, particularly with Lue teaching. When Leonard missed the complete season in 2021-22, George solely performed 31 video games. That Clippers workforce nonetheless completed 42-40. The Clippers anticipate Leonard and Harden, by comparability, to play extra video games than the prior instance, and the workforce will lean on Harden offensively. The 2017-18 MVP is aware of that the Clippers want extra than simply his expertise, and Frank praised Harden for main a players-only retreat at Arizona State and being “totally immersed” coming into his first coaching camp with the Clippers.
“It’s superior simply to observe James and the way he works. I do know he’s decided to have an amazing 12 months,” Frank mentioned Tuesday. “We do hear what individuals should say about our workforce, and our guys are extraordinarily motivated to have a season that hopefully surprises lots of people.”
Each Frank and Lue acknowledged the workforce’s have to play more durable defensively, which implies getting again in transition and rebounding. Lue mentioned that the workforce must play sooner, hit the paint and truly shoot out there 3s.
Per @SecondSpectrum
Clippers averaged 5 passes per recreation fewer than the Twenty ninth-ranked Mavericks and a pair of.1 fewer catch 3 makes an attempt than the Twenty ninth-ranked 76ers final season
It’s been on Tyronn Lue and his employees’s thoughts all summer time. Right here’s extra on Lue’s response to that pic.twitter.com/xU9bgYPGGb
— Regulation Murray 💡 (@LawMurrayTheNU) September 25, 2024
Lue likes to say that “hope is stronger than concern.” The group, teaching employees and gamers have to organize to attend on Leonard. However the best-laid plans of mice and males usually go awry. I discussed earlier this month Leonard is as secure a guess to overlook 20 video games as virtually any participant within the league.
Certain, Leonard might get himself able to play in a preseason recreation or two, keep on the ground in October and have the sort of season he had final 12 months, when he performed sufficient video games to return to All-Star and All-NBA standing for the primary time in three seasons. It’s simply as simple to see a state of affairs the place Leonard doesn’t get proper, and his day-to-day turns into week-to-week for an damage he has been coping with for months.
After the 12 months it has already been for the Clippers and Leonard, you possibly can perceive each ready to see Leonard be wholesome to consider in his development, in addition to merely by no means reaching a state of assurance he’ll really keep on the ground lengthy sufficient. Any stage of stability the Clippers and Leonard expertise going ahead must be thought-about a bonus.
(High photograph: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Photographs)
