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In the third quarter of the playoff opener between the LA Clippers and Phoenix Suns on Sunday, Kawhi Leonard grabbed a rebound after a missed 3-pointer from Torrey Craig. Sprinting coast-to-coast, Leonard, on his fourth dribble, absorbed contact from Suns center Deandre Ayton, planted his surgically repaired right leg and flipped up a shot while shrieking “foul” as he careened toward the baseline.
What seemed like a routine and-1 play in a 38-point performance by Leonard in a winning effort meant so much more. It was Leonard’s first postseason game in 671 days, a marathon of a journey back to the setting where he once led the Toronto Raptors and San Antonio Spurs to NBA titles.
Who can forget his Game 7 buzzer-beater in the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinals that eliminated the Philadelphia 76ers, or how he defended Kevin Durant and LeBron James in the 2014 Western Conference finals and 2014 NBA Finals, respectively? Leonard left the Spurs in 2018 and had the greatest one-and-done season in NBA history as he led the Raptors to their only championship. The Clippers envisioned him and Paul George getting them to the promised land when they added both in 2019, but then, of course, June 14, 2021, happened, on a play not too dissimilar to Sunday night’s.
With just under five minutes to play in Game 4 of a second-round playoff series against Utah, Leonard rebounded a Donovan Mitchell miss, Joe Ingles bumped Leonard to the side and the five-time All-Star awkwardly stumbled off the court and flexed his right knee. Leonard went on to play another 50 seconds, making two free throws before subbing out.
Though Leonard showed signs of subtle discomfort, he didn’t appear concerned about his injury after the game. “I’m good,” he said after scoring 31 points to help the Clippers tie the series. “Next question.”
But Leonard wasn’t good. After boarding the plane to Utah for Game 5, he received word that he had suffered a partial tear of the ACL in his right knee. Despite the nature of a partial tear, Leonard underwent the same surgery a player would undergo in the case of a full tear.
“I really didn’t find out until I got on the plane what the MRI said,” Leonard told The Athletic. “But once I did, yeah, I was going (to Utah to support my teammates) more than anything.”
The Clippers won Games 5 and 6 to advance to the Western Conference finals for the first time. But without Leonard, they succumbed in six games to the Devin Booker-led Suns. The two-time NBA Finals MVP had surgery on July 14, 2021, and only now is back in the postseason.
Here are some benchmark moments in Leonard’s gradual road back, along with the perspective of other NBA players who have recovered from a similar surgery.
“You can’t skip steps,” Leonard said earlier this season. “It’s a journey. Like I told (my teammates) heading into these playoffs, we are entering a tunnel and it is going to be dark for a while. But at the end, it’s going to be light and joy.”
A fellow member of the torn ACL fraternity was on the opposite bench that day. Suns center Dario Šarić suffered his torn ACL in Game 1 of the 2021 NBA Finals while driving on Bucks center Brook Lopez. He didn’t play in another NBA game for 15 months.
“It’s going to be a marathon,” Šarić told The Athletic, echoing Leonard. “Sometimes it’s really hard to prepare, you know? You go day by day, focus on a goal. Little steps, you know, and that’s how I do it. Everybody told me it was going to be a longer road.”
Šarić reached out to former Timberwolves teammate Ricky Rubio, who has torn his ACL twice, to gain insight into the recovery process. Like Leonard, Šarić took his recovery slowly and did not play consecutive games of double-digit minutes until December.
Šarić used the EuroBasket 2022 tournament to ramp up his return to action. He played with Leonard’s teammate Ivica Zubac on the Croatian national team.
“I was up and down that tournament,” Šarić recalled. “Had good games, I had bad games. But kind of preparing myself here for the NBA season too. So represent my national team but still have a chance to do some games and be ready for the NBA season.”
Meanwhile, on the day Šarić shared his insight, Leonard was about to go through another valley in the marathon, just as it appeared he was getting back.
Kira Lewis Jr., who was in the middle of his own rehab from a torn ACL suffered in December 2021, was on the Pelicans’ road trip.
“(I was) driving to like the middle of the paint,” Lewis recalled. “Went up, knee buckled. Came down, really. That’s pretty much what happened … a complete tear.”
Being on this particular trip for the Pelicans was a positive sign for the 2020 lottery pick, who was nearing the end of what was ultimately a 12-month rehab.
“There’s going to be days you don’t feel like doing it,” Lewis said of the rehab process. “There’ll be days you feel good, but the days that you don’t feel good, you just gotta get through it every day, you get close to the comeback to play. So just think about that.”
Leonard wasn’t ready to come back from his bout with knee stiffness until 25 days later.
Kawhi Leonard sits on the Clippers’ bench next to Norman Powell and Paul George during an Oct. 30 game against the Pelicans. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
“I’m not gonna explain it, because I’m not a doctor, and nobody in here is one,” Leonard said after his first start of the season, a win over the Detroit Pistons. “It’s gonna be a long journey. ACL recovery isn’t just one year. Everybody thinks that, but it’s a two-year process.”
Four days later, Leonard sprained his right ankle against the Utah Jazz. He downplayed the injury after the game again. “Just rolled my ankle. I should be fine.”
But Leonard wasn’t fine. He missed another six games.
Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray, who suffered a torn right ACL on April 21, 2021, two months before Leonard’s injury, was at the beginning of his own return.
Murray said he heard from “everybody that had an injury” during his recovery, including Zach LaVine (torn ACL), Klay Thompson (Achilles and torn ACL), John Wall (torn Achilles) and Victor Oladipo (torn quadriceps).
When asked about the feedback he got, Murray said he had heard, “It’s going to be a marathon.”
He empathized with Leonard on his return to play, noting that Leonard came back even sooner than he did due to the timing of both players’ injuries.
“I feel like at the start of the season, the first couple games, I was just happy to be there and just, you know, not forcing it, not really going to the rim, not really being aggressive. Just kind of letting the ball come to me and I’ll figure it out,” Murray explained. “But now it’s forcing the issue more, getting to the paint, taking off. Dunking. All that stuff. So everything is starting to come back and the confidence starts to come back. The same goes for Kawhi too.
“You know, when I came back, I rolled both my ankles, just because I hadn’t played in a while. So I know what he’s going through. His body’s going to have all different types of little injuries when he comes back during the season, but he’ll be fine.”
Ultimately, Murray was not mentally ready to play in the 2022 postseason.
“You hear a lot of different things,” Murray said. “You hear doubts, you hear rumors, you hear everything. So you just got to keep a level head and know that, you know, like, the work that I put in in the weight room and rehabbing, I know that’s going to show what needs to show. So I just kind of stuck to that, didn’t get too high, didn’t get too low.”
“I understand what he went through,” Gallinari said of Leonard. “My first time, even for me, the first time was a partial tear. You get surgery, you gotta go through the same process anyway. They repair the ACL anyway, even if it’s a partial tear. So I know, I know what surgery he has done and what he’s going through, and I’m happy for him that he’s back on the court.”
Leonard showed out against the Celtics, scoring 25 points in what was arguably the most impressive win of the season for the Clippers. It was Leonard’s first 20-point game of the season.
That it took Leonard some time to get his scoring going again did not surprise Gallinari, who said “you got to get the rust out of you” when returning to play.
“Mentally, you gotta get back into having trust in your body, trust in your leg, trust in your knee and trust your basketball skills,” he added.
Gallinari did not play in a regular-season game for the Celtics, but he is happy with his rehab and the process. He has the perspective of returning once already from a more difficult procedure.
“It’s a long process, but it’s a process where at the end of it, if you work hard and you do the right thing, you can get back better than you were before,” Gallinari said.
Hawks shooting guard Dejounte Murray was Leonard’s teammate in San Antonio. Murray tore his ACL in the 2018 preseason, the same season Leonard made his debut with the Raptors. Murray would bounce back and become an All-Star before departing for the Spurs in 2022.
“Kawhi loves the game; he loves to work hard,” Murray said. “A lot of people say he’s not in the public eye because he doesn’t have social media. He moves differently than a lot of other people. Or the average NBA player. But for him, he works hard, he loves the game. So it’s just the mental part. Not being where you want to be right away. And it’s gonna take time.”
One of the things Murray observed about Leonard was how he wasn’t playing a star’s share of minutes just yet. Leonard had only played 30-plus minutes in nine of his 17 games. But on the night the Clippers lost to the Hawks, Leonard played a then-season-high 38:26.
“It can be a challenge, just knowing where he was at in his career,” Murray said. “We get older, you know. I still think he’s a great player to talk to in this league. Obviously, health is just holding him back. But I feel like eventually, sooner than later, he’ll be able to get back to where he was. As you see, he’s playing, not playing. Minute restriction or whatever. So that should tell you, you’ll never be able to get the full Kawhi Leonard.”
Murray did feel like Leonard was going to turn a corner as the Clippers entered the second half of the season, saying, “I think he’ll overcome it and get back to where he wants to be.”
Kawhi Leonard drives to the basket against the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 28. (Brett Davis / USA Today)
That game also marked the first time since the injury that Leonard was on the court at the same time as Ingles, who suffered a torn ACL in his left knee seven months after colliding with Leonard in the 2021 postseason. That injury effectively marked the end of Ingles’ run with the Jazz.
“There’s no turning back, during your ACL,” Ingles said. “There’s no, ‘Just go home.’ We were in Minnesota. Get back home to my family, my kids and then kind of figured out the next steps of what that looked like. And like I said, obviously not having an injury before, trying to figure out those steps of like, who do I have surgery with? Where do I go for surgery? What rehab looks like and all that.”
The Jazz traded Ingles to the Portland Trail Blazers shortly after he injured his knee. He was all over the map from the time he was injured until he made his return to play 11 months later. Ingles turned 35 during his ACL rehab but was determined to continue his playing career.
“It was a challenge and, in front of the media and the news, it’s like, ‘He’s 35, he’s not going to come back, he’s already f—ing slow and unathletic,’” Ingles said. “It was a bit of an, almost like a ‘f— you’ to everyone. Like, I know I can come back. I’m going to come back better and just as strong as I was.”
Leonard did play six games on zero days rest in 2020-21, Tyronn Lue’s first season as head coach of the Clippers. But Leonard missed all of 2021-22 and went back to not playing on zero days rest to begin 2022-23.
“You got to gradually play minutes to get the ACL strong,” Leonard said after the season opener against the Lakers. “Once you start playing 38 minutes in the first game, it could easily weaken up. But I’m listening to the doctor with that. Like I said, it’s a long season. We wanna get in the playoffs and want me to play in the playoffs.”
The Clippers did not have any back-to-backs in February. That wasn’t the case for the Golden State Warriors, who visited the Clippers on Valentine’s Day after playing the night before at home against the Wizards.
Valentine’s Day in L.A. was a milestone for the Warriors’ Klay Thompson. He was playing a game on zero days rest for the first time since tearing his left ACL in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals.
“I had no idea. I thought it was a knee sprain,” Thompson told The Athletic of his ACL tear. “I never had such a major injury at the time. So I knew something was wrong, though. Because I felt a weird shift in my knee. Got the news after the game. The hardest part about that was I had to go straight to rehab. Such a long season, I didn’t have a lot of breaks. I had to go straight to the gym after Game 6, man. I had to go to surgery and just go to rehab. It was crazy.”
Thompson was getting ready to return for the 2020-21 season when he tore his right Achilles tendon, 17 months after his ACL tear. The two injuries delayed Thompson’s return to play until January 2022. He was away from the floor for 31 months.
“The first one taught me that I could do it,” Thompson said. “It was a freak accident when I tore my Achilles. But first ACL, like I knew if I put in the work, I’ll get back to where I was at.
“It was easy when we went to five straight finals. All you had to do was show up and hoop. But you find out who you are when you’re at rock bottom and you have to just do the most meticulous exercises to get back to walking and running. That’s when you find out who you are.”
Thompson says he and Leonard have never talked about their injuries with each other. But they connect in other ways.
“Every time I see Kawhi, we’re cool,” Thompson said. “I mean, we came in the draft together in 2011. We’re both from Southern California. And I think we like to do a lot of the same things. And he’s such a great player. I just knew he’d be all right. It just sucks when you have to go through that, and you’re in your prime, But I mean — it just sucks, man. It’s cool, he’s back and killing it and playing so well.”
Leonard had only two alley-oop dunks on the season entering the month. But he completed three in March and finished the season with a career-best seven. None were more eye-opening than a one-handed finish from Norman Powell in the fourth quarter of a Clippers win over the Lakers on April 5.
“I still felt pretty good,” Leonard said of catching Powell’s lob. “Was excited that Norm got the steal, so made the effort of trying to get down in transition, and if he made a pass, I was gonna try to finish it.”
Orlando Magic point guard Markelle Fultz can certainly relate. He set a career high with 30 dunks this season, his first full campaign since tearing his ACL in January 2021. Before this season, the top pick in the 2017 NBA Draft had only 31 dunks in four seasons.
“It’s a process of physically having to come in and every day doing the same thing,” Fultz said. “Some days you don’t feel like you’re making progress, but it’s a constant grind, you know? The picture is long. But also mentally to be able to think that you’re gonna be able to jump the same, be able to move the same, just getting hit on, you know, falling on your knee the first time and jumping off of it. So I think that the toughest part is just being able to stick with it.”
Kawhi Leonard hangs from the rim after a dunk against the Phoenix Suns on April 9. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
“You don’t remember?” Leonard responded when asked if he felt past the recovery part of his return now that he played in both games of a back-to-back. “I said it’s a what? Process? A two-year process. I think I’m still in it. Because I came in the season going back to limited minutes. I had to play limited minutes last night. For this.”
In the final week, the Clippers went 3-0 to secure a return to the playoffs. Leonard played all 24 minutes after halftime in a win against the Lakers, and 28:47 in the front end of a back-to-back in a win against the Trail Blazers. Then to clinch a playoff spot, Leonard played 35:56 on zero days rest to lead the Clippers to a win in Phoenix.
His efforts led to him being named NBA Western Conference Player of the Week, his first weekly award since January 2020.
“It never really affected me,” Leonard said about the back-to-back question at the end of the season. “You know, if you guys ask the question, doesn’t bother me at all. We understood what was going on and where we wanted me to be towards the end of the season.”
Leonard played 52 games this regular season, the same number he played in the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season. He did not miss consecutive games after Dec. 5. Of the 27 players who were named NBA All-Stars this season, only Jayson Tatum, Jaren Jackson Jr., Domantas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam and Bam Adebayo avoided missing consecutive games after Dec. 5.
Players around the league took note of Leonard’s progress, and he has always been appreciative and reflective of that.
“You don’t know who is watching. So it’s like, you just gotta keep pushing. Because you’re in this game to inspire the youth, or whoever’s watching,” Leonard said. “I look at their play, and what they’re doing, and talk to them about their injuries. And we all just kind of piggyback off of each other with that. And it’s just telling each other to keep pushing, keep lifting, and you just really got to get back to enjoying the game.”
The Clippers’ goal to contend for a championship may have been delayed, but now Leonard is in the driver’s seat to possibly help them fulfill that ultimate team dream. Just because Leonard has reached this point doesn’t mean the journey is finished. He is still recovering. That goes for anyone with an ACL injury. The marathon continues.
“I think it’s just still; I think it’s a continuous thing, really,” Leonard said. “With both knees, just trying to make sure they’re strong. Make sure I stay healthy for the rest of my career. So this is a marathon.”
What seemed like a routine and-1 play in a 38-point performance by Leonard in a winning effort meant so much more. It was Leonard’s first postseason game in 671 days, a marathon of a journey back to the setting where he once led the Toronto Raptors and San Antonio Spurs to NBA titles.
Who can forget his Game 7 buzzer-beater in the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinals that eliminated the Philadelphia 76ers, or how he defended Kevin Durant and LeBron James in the 2014 Western Conference finals and 2014 NBA Finals, respectively? Leonard left the Spurs in 2018 and had the greatest one-and-done season in NBA history as he led the Raptors to their only championship. The Clippers envisioned him and Paul George getting them to the promised land when they added both in 2019, but then, of course, June 14, 2021, happened, on a play not too dissimilar to Sunday night’s.
With just under five minutes to play in Game 4 of a second-round playoff series against Utah, Leonard rebounded a Donovan Mitchell miss, Joe Ingles bumped Leonard to the side and the five-time All-Star awkwardly stumbled off the court and flexed his right knee. Leonard went on to play another 50 seconds, making two free throws before subbing out.
Though Leonard showed signs of subtle discomfort, he didn’t appear concerned about his injury after the game. “I’m good,” he said after scoring 31 points to help the Clippers tie the series. “Next question.”
But Leonard wasn’t good. After boarding the plane to Utah for Game 5, he received word that he had suffered a partial tear of the ACL in his right knee. Despite the nature of a partial tear, Leonard underwent the same surgery a player would undergo in the case of a full tear.
“I really didn’t find out until I got on the plane what the MRI said,” Leonard told The Athletic. “But once I did, yeah, I was going (to Utah to support my teammates) more than anything.”
The Clippers won Games 5 and 6 to advance to the Western Conference finals for the first time. But without Leonard, they succumbed in six games to the Devin Booker-led Suns. The two-time NBA Finals MVP had surgery on July 14, 2021, and only now is back in the postseason.
Here are some benchmark moments in Leonard’s gradual road back, along with the perspective of other NBA players who have recovered from a similar surgery.
“You can’t skip steps,” Leonard said earlier this season. “It’s a journey. Like I told (my teammates) heading into these playoffs, we are entering a tunnel and it is going to be dark for a while. But at the end, it’s going to be light and joy.”
467 days after surgery
Leonard’s regular-season home return from knee surgery came against the same Suns organization that the Clippers fell to in 2021 and are trying to get past in the first round of the current playoffs. It was spoiled quickly. By the time Leonard entered the game in the middle of the second quarter, the Suns had a double-digit lead they would not relinquish. He scored 11 points and pulled down six rebounds in 21 minutes of action.A fellow member of the torn ACL fraternity was on the opposite bench that day. Suns center Dario Šarić suffered his torn ACL in Game 1 of the 2021 NBA Finals while driving on Bucks center Brook Lopez. He didn’t play in another NBA game for 15 months.
“It’s going to be a marathon,” Šarić told The Athletic, echoing Leonard. “Sometimes it’s really hard to prepare, you know? You go day by day, focus on a goal. Little steps, you know, and that’s how I do it. Everybody told me it was going to be a longer road.”
Šarić reached out to former Timberwolves teammate Ricky Rubio, who has torn his ACL twice, to gain insight into the recovery process. Like Leonard, Šarić took his recovery slowly and did not play consecutive games of double-digit minutes until December.
Šarić used the EuroBasket 2022 tournament to ramp up his return to action. He played with Leonard’s teammate Ivica Zubac on the Croatian national team.
“I was up and down that tournament,” Šarić recalled. “Had good games, I had bad games. But kind of preparing myself here for the NBA season too. So represent my national team but still have a chance to do some games and be ready for the NBA season.”
Meanwhile, on the day Šarić shared his insight, Leonard was about to go through another valley in the marathon, just as it appeared he was getting back.
474 days after surgery
The Clippers were staring at a four-game losing streak when the New Orleans Pelicans came to town Oct. 30. Two games earlier, Leonard reported stiffness in his right knee. He traveled back to L.A. to begin treatment and was ruled out indefinitely.Kira Lewis Jr., who was in the middle of his own rehab from a torn ACL suffered in December 2021, was on the Pelicans’ road trip.
“(I was) driving to like the middle of the paint,” Lewis recalled. “Went up, knee buckled. Came down, really. That’s pretty much what happened … a complete tear.”
Being on this particular trip for the Pelicans was a positive sign for the 2020 lottery pick, who was nearing the end of what was ultimately a 12-month rehab.
“There’s going to be days you don’t feel like doing it,” Lewis said of the rehab process. “There’ll be days you feel good, but the days that you don’t feel good, you just gotta get through it every day, you get close to the comeback to play. So just think about that.”
Leonard wasn’t ready to come back from his bout with knee stiffness until 25 days later.
Kawhi Leonard sits on the Clippers’ bench next to Norman Powell and Paul George during an Oct. 30 game against the Pelicans. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
492 days after surgery
On Nov. 17, after missing 12 consecutive games, Leonard cleared another benchmark: The experiment of coming off the bench was over.“I’m not gonna explain it, because I’m not a doctor, and nobody in here is one,” Leonard said after his first start of the season, a win over the Detroit Pistons. “It’s gonna be a long journey. ACL recovery isn’t just one year. Everybody thinks that, but it’s a two-year process.”
Four days later, Leonard sprained his right ankle against the Utah Jazz. He downplayed the injury after the game again. “Just rolled my ankle. I should be fine.”
But Leonard wasn’t fine. He missed another six games.
500 days after surgery
One of those missed games was against Denver on Nov. 25.Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray, who suffered a torn right ACL on April 21, 2021, two months before Leonard’s injury, was at the beginning of his own return.
Murray said he heard from “everybody that had an injury” during his recovery, including Zach LaVine (torn ACL), Klay Thompson (Achilles and torn ACL), John Wall (torn Achilles) and Victor Oladipo (torn quadriceps).
When asked about the feedback he got, Murray said he had heard, “It’s going to be a marathon.”
He empathized with Leonard on his return to play, noting that Leonard came back even sooner than he did due to the timing of both players’ injuries.
“I feel like at the start of the season, the first couple games, I was just happy to be there and just, you know, not forcing it, not really going to the rim, not really being aggressive. Just kind of letting the ball come to me and I’ll figure it out,” Murray explained. “But now it’s forcing the issue more, getting to the paint, taking off. Dunking. All that stuff. So everything is starting to come back and the confidence starts to come back. The same goes for Kawhi too.
“You know, when I came back, I rolled both my ankles, just because I hadn’t played in a while. So I know what he’s going through. His body’s going to have all different types of little injuries when he comes back during the season, but he’ll be fine.”
Ultimately, Murray was not mentally ready to play in the 2022 postseason.
“You hear a lot of different things,” Murray said. “You hear doubts, you hear rumors, you hear everything. So you just got to keep a level head and know that, you know, like, the work that I put in in the weight room and rehabbing, I know that’s going to show what needs to show. So I just kind of stuck to that, didn’t get too high, didn’t get too low.”
517 days after surgery
When the Boston Celtics visited the Clippers in early December, it was Leonard’s first home game since spraining his ankle right before Thanksgiving. On the trip with the Celtics was Danilo Gallinari, a former Clipper who tore his ACL playing in the same EuroBasket tournament as Šarić the previous summer. This was Gallinari’s second ACL tear in his right knee.“I understand what he went through,” Gallinari said of Leonard. “My first time, even for me, the first time was a partial tear. You get surgery, you gotta go through the same process anyway. They repair the ACL anyway, even if it’s a partial tear. So I know, I know what surgery he has done and what he’s going through, and I’m happy for him that he’s back on the court.”
Leonard showed out against the Celtics, scoring 25 points in what was arguably the most impressive win of the season for the Clippers. It was Leonard’s first 20-point game of the season.
That it took Leonard some time to get his scoring going again did not surprise Gallinari, who said “you got to get the rust out of you” when returning to play.
“Mentally, you gotta get back into having trust in your body, trust in your leg, trust in your knee and trust your basketball skills,” he added.
Gallinari did not play in a regular-season game for the Celtics, but he is happy with his rehab and the process. He has the perspective of returning once already from a more difficult procedure.
“It’s a long process, but it’s a process where at the end of it, if you work hard and you do the right thing, you can get back better than you were before,” Gallinari said.
544 days after surgery
As the calendar turned to January, Leonard was having strong performances overall. But he was not finishing games well. During a six-game losing streak that culminated with a loss to the Atlanta Hawks, Leonard was held to 40 percent shooting in the fourth quarters.Hawks shooting guard Dejounte Murray was Leonard’s teammate in San Antonio. Murray tore his ACL in the 2018 preseason, the same season Leonard made his debut with the Raptors. Murray would bounce back and become an All-Star before departing for the Spurs in 2022.
“Kawhi loves the game; he loves to work hard,” Murray said. “A lot of people say he’s not in the public eye because he doesn’t have social media. He moves differently than a lot of other people. Or the average NBA player. But for him, he works hard, he loves the game. So it’s just the mental part. Not being where you want to be right away. And it’s gonna take time.”
One of the things Murray observed about Leonard was how he wasn’t playing a star’s share of minutes just yet. Leonard had only played 30-plus minutes in nine of his 17 games. But on the night the Clippers lost to the Hawks, Leonard played a then-season-high 38:26.
“It can be a challenge, just knowing where he was at in his career,” Murray said. “We get older, you know. I still think he’s a great player to talk to in this league. Obviously, health is just holding him back. But I feel like eventually, sooner than later, he’ll be able to get back to where he was. As you see, he’s playing, not playing. Minute restriction or whatever. So that should tell you, you’ll never be able to get the full Kawhi Leonard.”
Murray did feel like Leonard was going to turn a corner as the Clippers entered the second half of the season, saying, “I think he’ll overcome it and get back to where he wants to be.”
Kawhi Leonard drives to the basket against the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 28. (Brett Davis / USA Today)
569 days after surgery
Leonard’s scorching efficiency came to a screeching halt to begin February. When the Clippers visited the Milwaukee Bucks, Leonard was held to 17 points on 7-of-26 shooting. One of Leonard’s misses was on a third-quarter dunk attempt, his only missed dunk of the season.That game also marked the first time since the injury that Leonard was on the court at the same time as Ingles, who suffered a torn ACL in his left knee seven months after colliding with Leonard in the 2021 postseason. That injury effectively marked the end of Ingles’ run with the Jazz.
“There’s no turning back, during your ACL,” Ingles said. “There’s no, ‘Just go home.’ We were in Minnesota. Get back home to my family, my kids and then kind of figured out the next steps of what that looked like. And like I said, obviously not having an injury before, trying to figure out those steps of like, who do I have surgery with? Where do I go for surgery? What rehab looks like and all that.”
The Jazz traded Ingles to the Portland Trail Blazers shortly after he injured his knee. He was all over the map from the time he was injured until he made his return to play 11 months later. Ingles turned 35 during his ACL rehab but was determined to continue his playing career.
“It was a challenge and, in front of the media and the news, it’s like, ‘He’s 35, he’s not going to come back, he’s already f—ing slow and unathletic,’” Ingles said. “It was a bit of an, almost like a ‘f— you’ to everyone. Like, I know I can come back. I’m going to come back better and just as strong as I was.”
581 days after surgery
Not playing on zero days rest has been something that Leonard has been criticized for since his last season in San Antonio when he played only nine games total while dealing with right quadriceps tendinopathy. Leonard did not play in both games of a back-to-back in either of the 2017-18, 2018-19 or 2019-20 seasons across three franchises.Leonard did play six games on zero days rest in 2020-21, Tyronn Lue’s first season as head coach of the Clippers. But Leonard missed all of 2021-22 and went back to not playing on zero days rest to begin 2022-23.
“You got to gradually play minutes to get the ACL strong,” Leonard said after the season opener against the Lakers. “Once you start playing 38 minutes in the first game, it could easily weaken up. But I’m listening to the doctor with that. Like I said, it’s a long season. We wanna get in the playoffs and want me to play in the playoffs.”
The Clippers did not have any back-to-backs in February. That wasn’t the case for the Golden State Warriors, who visited the Clippers on Valentine’s Day after playing the night before at home against the Wizards.
Valentine’s Day in L.A. was a milestone for the Warriors’ Klay Thompson. He was playing a game on zero days rest for the first time since tearing his left ACL in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals.
“I had no idea. I thought it was a knee sprain,” Thompson told The Athletic of his ACL tear. “I never had such a major injury at the time. So I knew something was wrong, though. Because I felt a weird shift in my knee. Got the news after the game. The hardest part about that was I had to go straight to rehab. Such a long season, I didn’t have a lot of breaks. I had to go straight to the gym after Game 6, man. I had to go to surgery and just go to rehab. It was crazy.”
Thompson was getting ready to return for the 2020-21 season when he tore his right Achilles tendon, 17 months after his ACL tear. The two injuries delayed Thompson’s return to play until January 2022. He was away from the floor for 31 months.
“The first one taught me that I could do it,” Thompson said. “It was a freak accident when I tore my Achilles. But first ACL, like I knew if I put in the work, I’ll get back to where I was at.
“It was easy when we went to five straight finals. All you had to do was show up and hoop. But you find out who you are when you’re at rock bottom and you have to just do the most meticulous exercises to get back to walking and running. That’s when you find out who you are.”
Thompson says he and Leonard have never talked about their injuries with each other. But they connect in other ways.
“Every time I see Kawhi, we’re cool,” Thompson said. “I mean, we came in the draft together in 2011. We’re both from Southern California. And I think we like to do a lot of the same things. And he’s such a great player. I just knew he’d be all right. It just sucks when you have to go through that, and you’re in your prime, But I mean — it just sucks, man. It’s cool, he’s back and killing it and playing so well.”
631 days after surgery
A telltale sign of an NBA player’s physical health can be seen when dunking the basketball. Leonard wasn’t playing in back-to-backs by the time March arrived, but he was increasing his paint attacks and finishing with more and more authority.Leonard had only two alley-oop dunks on the season entering the month. But he completed three in March and finished the season with a career-best seven. None were more eye-opening than a one-handed finish from Norman Powell in the fourth quarter of a Clippers win over the Lakers on April 5.
“I still felt pretty good,” Leonard said of catching Powell’s lob. “Was excited that Norm got the steal, so made the effort of trying to get down in transition, and if he made a pass, I was gonna try to finish it.”
Orlando Magic point guard Markelle Fultz can certainly relate. He set a career high with 30 dunks this season, his first full campaign since tearing his ACL in January 2021. Before this season, the top pick in the 2017 NBA Draft had only 31 dunks in four seasons.
“It’s a process of physically having to come in and every day doing the same thing,” Fultz said. “Some days you don’t feel like you’re making progress, but it’s a constant grind, you know? The picture is long. But also mentally to be able to think that you’re gonna be able to jump the same, be able to move the same, just getting hit on, you know, falling on your knee the first time and jumping off of it. So I think that the toughest part is just being able to stick with it.”
Kawhi Leonard hangs from the rim after a dunk against the Phoenix Suns on April 9. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
The final stretch
When Leonard took the court against the New Orleans Pelicans on April 1, it was the first time he played a game on zero days rest since April 9, 2021, against the Houston Rockets.“You don’t remember?” Leonard responded when asked if he felt past the recovery part of his return now that he played in both games of a back-to-back. “I said it’s a what? Process? A two-year process. I think I’m still in it. Because I came in the season going back to limited minutes. I had to play limited minutes last night. For this.”
In the final week, the Clippers went 3-0 to secure a return to the playoffs. Leonard played all 24 minutes after halftime in a win against the Lakers, and 28:47 in the front end of a back-to-back in a win against the Trail Blazers. Then to clinch a playoff spot, Leonard played 35:56 on zero days rest to lead the Clippers to a win in Phoenix.
His efforts led to him being named NBA Western Conference Player of the Week, his first weekly award since January 2020.
“It never really affected me,” Leonard said about the back-to-back question at the end of the season. “You know, if you guys ask the question, doesn’t bother me at all. We understood what was going on and where we wanted me to be towards the end of the season.”
Leonard played 52 games this regular season, the same number he played in the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season. He did not miss consecutive games after Dec. 5. Of the 27 players who were named NBA All-Stars this season, only Jayson Tatum, Jaren Jackson Jr., Domantas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam and Bam Adebayo avoided missing consecutive games after Dec. 5.
Players around the league took note of Leonard’s progress, and he has always been appreciative and reflective of that.
“You don’t know who is watching. So it’s like, you just gotta keep pushing. Because you’re in this game to inspire the youth, or whoever’s watching,” Leonard said. “I look at their play, and what they’re doing, and talk to them about their injuries. And we all just kind of piggyback off of each other with that. And it’s just telling each other to keep pushing, keep lifting, and you just really got to get back to enjoying the game.”
The Clippers’ goal to contend for a championship may have been delayed, but now Leonard is in the driver’s seat to possibly help them fulfill that ultimate team dream. Just because Leonard has reached this point doesn’t mean the journey is finished. He is still recovering. That goes for anyone with an ACL injury. The marathon continues.
“I think it’s just still; I think it’s a continuous thing, really,” Leonard said. “With both knees, just trying to make sure they’re strong. Make sure I stay healthy for the rest of my career. So this is a marathon.”
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Breh they should play on an aircraft carrier like they do college
Looks like they copy pasted a basketball arena into a Street Fighter II stage.
lawdog1
Supporter
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Even if the intentions behind the tweet were 100 percent innocent or playful, not a good idea.
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it’s a parody account haha got me goooooood
lawdog1
Supporter
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Me too then.
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I wish more people would value my mental health and not joke about this situation
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Draymond Post Game comment regarding the Sabonis incident....
lawdog1
Supporter
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Sucks the Celtics didn’t get this Jordan Poole in the finals
Probably wouldn’t have mattered to the ultimate result if the C’s still got the same level of production from Tatum
dacomeup
Supporter
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I didn’t take it that literally but also admittedly didn’t hear the clip or context of which it was said. He’s just a negative unless he’s scoring
elpablo21
Supporter
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Really?
The NBA needs to prop up the US Military?
Na, keep that “playing on a warship” to the NCAA
The NBA needs to prop up the US Military?
Na, keep that “playing on a warship” to the NCAA
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Mister Meaner
formerly super producer j
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Replace Simons with Mitchell should J
not be able to go on that ankleKnicks in 6 [still]
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ïm taking scott foster 48 in this matchup
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Draymond beat them charges
HOU$TON
formerly convertibleburt
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Warriors plugged in with Adam Silver. Collusion
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Draymond has the longest leash in NBA history. It was clear as day he was never gonna be suspended
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