Kawhi Leonard injury: Clippers star sidelined indefinitely to rehabilitate knee, per report

Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard will miss the beginning of the regular season and is out indefinitely, ESPN’s Shams Charania and Ohm Youngmisuk reported Thursday. Leonard will reportedly continue his rehabilitation program as he deals with 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,” via ClutchPoints’ Tomer Azarly.

Shaw continued: “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 reporters that Leonard wouldn’t play in Thursday’s preseason finale, via the Los Angeles Times’ Broderick Turner. Lue said that he was “not sure” if Leonard would be available when the regular season starts.

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 particularly enlightening, 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 Sep. 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 Clippers 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 goal, Frank said, was to avoid putting themselves in the same position they were in at the end of last season. 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 the Dallas Mavericks, and, while his knee was in in “a really, really good place” when he suited up for Game 2, it quickly got to a point “where it wasn’t manageable,” Frank said. This time, they want to be as cautious as possible in hopes that they can manage the issue all season and beyond: “We’re in a really good place, but we want to keep it in a good place.”

Later that day, The Athletic 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 replaced him with Derrick White.

Leonard tore the ACL in his right knee in the 2021 playoffs and missed the entire 2021-22 season as a result. He then tore the meniscus in his right knee in the 2023 playoffs. 

Last season, Leonard made the All-NBA Second Team and averaged 23.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 34.3 minutes. Before the knee inflammation late in the season, 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 framed this, 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 a giant hole in the lineup, and that will be harder than it used to be after letting Paul George walk in free agency. You can expect Derrick Jones Jr. and Terance Mann to get the toughest defensive assignments and James Harden and Norman Powell to carry the load offensively.