This long-awaited return, delayed by the pandemic bubble in 2020, crowd-size restrictions in 2021 and knee injuries in 2022 and 2023, came after the 32-year-old Leonard missed the Clippers’ series-opening victory over the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday as he continued to rehabilitate from a right knee injury that had sidelined him since March 31. Though Clippers Coach Tyronn Lue looked overjoyed to have his six-time all-star back in the starting lineup, Leonard was rusty and largely ineffective in the Mavericks’ 96-93 victory in Game 2 of the first-round matchup.
Leonard played 35 minutes but scored just 15 points on 17 shots, missing all five of his three-point attempts. He committed a critical turnover and came up short on a turnaround jumper to fuel a game-changing 14-2 run by Dallas in the fourth quarter, and he never really engaged in the mano-a-mano showdowns with Luka Doncic that marked their previous playoff meetings in 2020 and 2021. If the Clippers are going to retake control of the series and make good on the hype that built after they traded for James Harden in November and went 23-5 in December and January, Leonard must immediately find his stride.
“I felt pretty good in the game,” Leonard said. “I was okay. … This is my first game in 20-something days. I don’t know [about my conditioning]. I’m not measuring that. We’ve got to be better as a unit overall. That starts with me. Even if my wind is low, I’ve got to find a way.”
Tuesday’s loss was a textbook case of a star’s return temporarily upsetting the apple cart by changing the roles and responsibilities of everyone around him. After racing out of the gate to build an insurmountable lead early in Game 1, the Clippers shot a dismal 36.8 percent from the field in Game 2 and made just 8 of 30 three-point attempts. Harden, who made the most of his green light Sunday, couldn’t find his shooting touch Tuesday. And Paul George, who gets to flex his scoring and playmaking muscles more when Leonard is sidelined, took only 14 shots and got lost in the flow as the grinding game unfolded.
Leonard didn’t score until early in the second quarter, and his preference for isolation jumpers slowed down the crisp ball movement the Clippers displayed in Game 1. Dallas led for most of the night and pulled out a tight win thanks to Doncic, who finished with a game-high 32 points to go with nine assists and six rebounds. Leonard puttered around in second gear reacclimating after more than three weeks away; Doncic hunted for kill shots down the stretch, unleashing screams toward courtside when he delivered multiple clutch three-pointers in the final period.
“[The Mavericks are] just doing a great job of packing the paint and junking it up,” George said. “We’ve got to do a better job of playing a little faster. … [Leonard] is as good as it comes at getting his shots and the types of shots he wants to get, generating good looks. It’s great to have that back. But obviously there’s a little adjustment [with] him coming back. … Kawhi is one of the best in the world. He’s going to find his rhythm and we’re going to find our rhythm around him.”
Despite spending a half-decade together, Leonard and the Clippers still seem to operate on different wavelengths too often for everyone’s liking. Leonard turned in an all-star-caliber season, but his recent injury absence was shrouded in secrecy, like countless previous absences, and he wasn’t ruled out for Game 1 until shortly before tip-off. His clunky comeback could be explained, in part, by the fact that he hadn’t played any full-contact basketball with his teammates in the run-up to the postseason.
The Clippers and their fans know this limbo well: Injuries cut short his playoff runs in 2021 and 2023, and hopes that he might return from a season-long knee injury for the 2022 run never materialized. During this era, the Clippers have never looked more comfortable or advanced as far as they did in 2021, when they pulled together after Leonard tore his ACL in the second round to reach the first Western Conference finals appearance in team history.
When Leonard arrived in Los Angeles, he was fresh off leading the Toronto Raptors to their first NBA championship. His two rings and two Finals MVPs made him the most accomplished player in Clippers history before he even put on their jersey. But in the categories that separate stars from franchise faces — availability, playoff success, culture setting, charisma — Leonard has consistently fallen short.
Clippers fans certainly cheered when Leonard’s name was announced during the introduction of the starting lineup, but they tend to save their most deafening ovations for guard Russell Westbrook and an in-game promotion that grants free chicken sandwiches to fans if an opponent misses two free throws. Signs of Leonard fandom are hardly ubiquitous in the stands; this season, he ranked outside the top 15 in jersey sales among the NBA’s star players and the Clippers placed outside the top 10 in team merchandise sales. It’s hard to blame the fans, because each playoff comeback inevitability raises fears of another health-related disappearance.
Leonard has become so synonymous with health concerns that he felt the need in October to push back against the idea that the NBA’s player participation policy — meant to curb “load management,” or the strategic resting of players — was influenced by his travails. He proceeded to back up that talk by averaging 23.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 68 games, his healthiest season since he was a member of the 2016-17 San Antonio Spurs.
Still, something has been missing. Leonard doesn’t court fame and visibility like Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, preferring to keep fans at arm’s length with his controlled emotions during games and to answer media queries with as few words and details as possible. Many Raptors fans found this wooden exterior to be charming and quirky during the 2019 championship season, and the Clippers faithful might rally around him in similar fashion if the Clippers can mount a deep run of their own.
Indeed, Leonard is a hired gun stuck playing in shadows cast by James’s Lakers, who won the 2020 title, and by his own past accomplishments with the Spurs and Raptors. Joel Embiid has become a Philadelphia 76ers icon despite his own string of injuries and postseason disappointments because of a decade of loyalty and valiant attempts to get over the hump. Leonard doesn’t show his pain or disclose his off-court struggles, a choice that pushes away observers in Los Angeles who didn’t watch him grow up in the NBA.
The Clippers granted Leonard a three-year, $152 million contract extension in January because they still believe his two-way talents — the sublime midrange shooting and ball-hawking defense — make him the right player to lead the organization into its new billion-dollar Inglewood arena next season. Therein lies the stakes for the balance of this Clippers run: If Leonard falls short again, the new era at Intuit Dome will launch with the same old nagging frustrations.
“As far as getting a rhythm, as far as his play, [Leonard] has been getting his shots and that’s going to come,” Lue said. “I thought defensively he did some good things, some steals and some deflections. It’s just good to have him back on the floor. We’ll be able to make it work.”
Apsny News English
