Kawhi Leonard is chronically injured, and the Clippers were foolish to convince themselves otherwise

Estimates vary as to how many actual Clippers fans exist in the world. However many there are, it’s not a good time to be one. 

Paul George is gone. Even worse, James Harden isn’t. And worst and most predictably of all, Kawhi Leonard is hurt again. 

It’s the knee. Again. The one that knocked him out of last year’s playoffs two games into a first-round series with the Dallas Mavericks, a series the Clippers lost in six games. The one that got him sent home from the Olympics. The one Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank referenced less than a month ago when he said the swelling was “almost gone” after yet another offseason procedure. 

Evidently that’s not the case as Leonard is now out “indefinitely” as he continues to deal with inflammation, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania and Ohm Youngmisuk. 

Reminder: the Clippers signed Leonard to a three-year, $153 million contract extension in January, when they decided to bet that a few months of sustained health would continue when there were literally years of evidence to suggest otherwise. 

Suffice to say, that decision to stay in business with Leonard — a move that was ill-advised at best and downright desperate at worst — is looking exponentially worse by the minute. If you think it’s even a remote possibility that Leonard is going to somehow turn up healthy through a full postseason run, your optimism is commendable. Even enviable. But me? I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. 

If you are one of these optimists who sees the hope in just about everything and looks for positives instead of negatives (which can admittedly be a breath of fresh air in this industry), you might point to 2018-19 as an example as to how a compromised Leonard can be “managed” throughout a full season and postseason run. 

That season, the Toronto Raptors barely managed Leonard’s health by not playing him in back-to-backs and he lasted the whole postseason and won a championship. However, that was five years ago. Since that time, Leonard, in addition to getting five years older, has endured three surgeries after tearing both his ACL and MCL in the same knee. 

So if Leonard was barely being managed before an ACL and MCL tear, how was it ever realistic for the Clippers to think that the 68 games he played last season was anything but an aberration? How could they take that little slice of deceiving evidence and think it was going to last not just the rest of last season, but the rest of the next three seasons, at the end of which Leonard will be 36 years old? 

At some point, realism has to set in. 

Let’s call this what it is: The Clippers went all in when in the summer of 2019 they signed Leonard and traded for Paul George in a deal that cost them Shai-Gilgeous Alexander and a trove of future draft picks, and they have been desperately trying to validate that decision ever since. 

To be clear, it wasn’t a bad decision. Leonard was the hottest commodity in basketball coming off that title run with the Raptors, and nobody knew what Gilgeous-Alexander was going to become in Oklahoma City. Given the opportunity, they took a shot like any other team in the league would have.

Now, the trade for Harden? Desperate. The Leonard extension? Desperate. Save the talk about how great the Clippers looked for a few months last season after the trade. It was never going to last. Harden is not winning you anything without Leonard, and Leonard is not staying healthy. 

The least they could’ve done, I suppose, was hang on to George after they already basically pot committed to Leonard and Harden. But in truth, it was smart to let George go to Philadelphia in free agency. This thing is over. But then the Clippers did the worst thing and half-measured their way into a palatable balance sheet. They should’ve gone the whole way and looked to trade Leonard or simply let him walk. Same for Harden. 

That’s what would’ve made the most basketball sense. But there’s a business side to this, too, and that can’t be ignored. The Clippers are opening a new arena this season. They need names. It’s understandable they didn’t want to gut the roster of its star power at this particular point. If that’s your explanation for paying Leonard and Harden damn near a quarter of a billion dollars over the next three years, fine.

But don’t make the argument about actual basketball. Because Leonard is not going to be playing much of that anymore. This is not a fluke injury or bad luck or a bump in the road. It is a chronic condition. It is what it is. 

Only the Clippers apparently couldn’t see that.