Clippers, Leonard like to keep fans guessing about status
Leonard's absence looms large in determining the team's fate in the postseason
I feel bad for Clippers fans.
No, not because they’re Clippers fans. Stop that, Lakers Nation.
These good people — I just wrote about how much I admire this contrarian crew, self-deprecating realists who never give up hope and who, best of all, come through for each other in the clutch in real ways — could very well see their team win the whole shebang this season.
Long suffering and loyal as they are, they’d deserve it.
But I feel for ’em because they’re so often cast as unwitting participants in the Clippers’ cat-and-mouse gamesmanship, the team’s often opaque and mysterious way of reporting injuries, especially when it comes to their biggest star, Kawhi Leonard.
The two-time NBA Finals MVP has suffered critical injuries in recent playoffs and has, after playing 68 games this season, missed the past six under the vague distinction of right knee “soreness” and “inflammation.”
Putting up with uncertainty could be fans’ contribution, I suppose, to keeping opponents honest. A personal sacrifice made for the Clippers’ pursuit of that so-far-elusive first championship — a prize that, by the way, Bones Hyland said he can envision.
Fresh off of leading the Clippers’ skeleton crew with a career-high 37 points in Wednesday’s freewheeling 124-108 loss to the fully staffed Phoenix Suns, the reserve guard said it: “Knowing the talent that we have, health will play a big part in that, but I feel like we have every piece, from the top guy to the bottom guy, one through 15, if we stay together and play Clippers’ basketball ... through this whole run, we’ll be good.”
Catch that? Health will play a big part.
That’s either the most obvious and benign statement in the history of postgame pressers — or a hint, the quiet part out loud!
And let me be clear, I have no indication that it’s anything but the former. The vibes seem swell around the team, no one seems stressed about a bout of reported inflammation. Signs point to a franchise gearing up for Kawhi vs. Luka, Part 3, when the Clippers (51-29) and Dallas Mavericks (50-30) meet again in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. Sounds fun; let’s go!
It’s just what paying close attention to the Clippers for a
few seasons does to you: Turns you into a poor man’s Matlock, a cursory Columbo. Someone who aspires to play Sherlockdown defense, but who can only hope to contain the multitude of possibilities that exist in what should be even the most innocuous answer.
Tyronn Lue was, of course, asked pregame Wednesday whether he has any concern, with only three regular-season games to go, about Leonard’s absence — the past four on account of “inflammation” in a knee that’s been through a torn ACL and torn meniscus — and whether it could “bleed into the playoffs at all?”
And so when the coach — the team representative who is burdened with having to answer most of these questions on the record — responded: “No, not as of right now,” yes, my antennae shot right up. What does that mean? And it’s not just me. Fans are conditioned to hear it, too.
“The last few times, it was literally seasonending injuries and they didn’t say nothing,” said San Diego’s Victor Ortega, a big Leonard fan even before he joined the Clippers, who he’d been rooting for since 2013. “Personally, I’d rather them be a little up front ... in terms of that stuff. I feel like they do need to be up front with the fans.”
“We’re season ticket holders, and he went out about the same time last year, so this last week is very, very tense,” said Joseph Raquel, who was at the game Wednesday with his son, 13-yearold Ansel, both of them wearing Leonard’s No. 2 jerseys. “You just get so used to it by now, ‘Is he playing or is he not?’ ”
These fans haven’t forgotten the torment of the 2021 playoffs, when what couldawoulda been a title run was interrupted by what turned out to be Leonard’s torn ACL — even though that debilitating injury was treated, at the time, as something from which he coulda returned any day.
When we asked Lue: Is Kawhi out for tomorrow? He said: “Yes, sir.” We asked: What is Kawhi’s status? “Kawhi is out tonight. That’s the only thing I know.” And: Any chance you guys get Kawhi back? “I’m not sure.” It would help. “Yeah, for sure.”
A source even fed TNT’S Chris Haynes intel that Leonard could return if the team won a couple more games: “If the Clippers are able to
get two more wins and advance to the NBA Finals, sources have told me that Kawhi’s camp and the Clippers will meet and decide his fate from there. So they will decide if it’s worth it for him to get back out there in the NBA Finals. He is not ruling out a return at all in this postseason . ... ”
The Clippers, shorthanded and on fumes, did not get two more victories. And Leonard did not return until a whole season later, 2022-23 — which also ended with another unfortunate plot twist.
Last year, the Clippers’ leading man — who’d been lighting the Suns’ world on fire, in two games tallying 69 points on 54.5% shooting, 16 rebounds, 13 assists, two blocks, two steals and a Game 1 victory — sustained the meniscus tear that kept him out for the remaining three games of that first-round series ... though, again, the Clippers left open the possibility that he’d return.
Before Game 3, Lawrence Frank, the team’s president of basketball operations, met with reporters and told us the team would “literally take it day by day and kind of see how he responds to treatment,” and so they’d “see where we’re at for Game 4.”
Where they were: Without Kawhi again.
Where are they now? Unconcerned. As of right now.
The Clippers have their calculus for what they tell us and what they don’t. And, famously, the less you know about Leonard, the better by Leonard’s own calculations.
But you can forgive folks with a vested interest in the superstar and his team for their skepticism. You can feel for them and wish with them that their team wasn’t always so dang coy. That the Clippers would be like the Milwaukee Bucks, who had the respect to be up front with bad news, sharing a clear update about their superstar with their fans within a day in a social media post Wednesday:
“MEDICAL UPDATE: Giannis Antetokounmpo left last night’s win vs. Boston in the third quarter with a left soleus (calf) injury. Antetokounmpo underwent an MRI last night that confirmed the diagnosis of a left soleus (calf) strain. He will miss the remaining three games of the regular season and receive daily treatment and evaluation.”
That didn’t brighten any Bucks fans’ days. But at least those folks aren’t left fumbling around, cheering and stressing in the dark.