INGLEWOOD — The right knee inflammation that sidelined Kawhi Leonard during last season’s playoffs, then sent him home from Team USA in July, will keep him out indefinitely to start the season.
This isn’t a huge surprise considering Leonard hasn’t played in a game since April 26 (Game 3 of the Clippers first-round series against Dallas), but it was Shams Charania and Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN who broke the news.
Leonard had a procedure on his troublesome right knee after the season but said he got it to a “neutral place” for USA Basketball training camp in July. Still, coach Steve Kerr and USA Basketball had concerns and sent him home. Clippers coach (and USA Basketball assistant) Tyronn Lue said he had a setback between then and the start of the Clippers training camp in Hawaii.
“He felt good, he looked good, the swelling was down, everything was going in the right direction. So he had worked hard to get to that point,” Lue said before the Clippers final preseason game. “And then, once you start playing, you never know what’s going to happen. But he was in position, we thought, in the right position to go forward and like you said, it was a setback. So that was unfortunate.”
Lue reiterated what Clippers president Lawrence Frank said at the start of training camp: Leonard hasn’t had a setback since then, is getting better, but hasn’t progressed enough to play.
“He’s he’s feeling good. He’s progressing. He’s going in the right direction, doing all the right things,” Lue said. “So soon he will be on the court, but not yet.”
Lue also shot down the idea Leonard wouldn’t play this season.
However, in what is projected to be a brutally tight Western Conference, Los Angeles not having its best player for the first weeks of the season — at least — could be the difference between making the playoffs and having an uphill battle through the play-in, or missing the postseason entirely. The Clippers are putting a lot on the shoulders of James Harden and a solid collection of role players to start the season.
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