Ramona ShelburneApr 24, 2025, 11:30 AM ET
Shut
- Senior author for ESPN.com
- Spent seven years on the Los Angeles Day-to-day Information
The video Kawhi Leonard launched throughout social media on Dec. 27 was once well-produced, however cryptic.
The LA Clippers big name drives as much as a lake, taking note of a message from any individual who pleads with him to handle the more than a few duties and tasks he is were given on his plate. Restoration, circle of relatives, media engagements. He handbags his lips and appears down on the telephone, which is interrupting his tranquil break out.
Because the voicemail continues, he will get out of the auto and sees a fisherman. He walks towards the person.
Sitting subsequent to a white bucket preserving a basketball, and a small stereo, the person casts into the ripples.
We’ve got were given thrilling information popping out of Los Angeles, the radio hums. The person turns up the amount.
Kawhi Leonard seems to be returning to the courtroom lovely quickly. May well be nice …
“I knew I may just to find you right here,” Leonard says to the fisherman. “You catch the rest?”
Underneath a bucket hat, the fisherman is published to be any other model of Leonard. He responds, “Nah, now not but. There is been excellent days. There is been dangerous days. However I stay coming again.
“It is the nature of the sport.”
It is the type of advert that is designed to reason a stir. And this one did remind those that Leonard was once nonetheless round, nonetheless running at the back of the scenes, and doubtlessly coming again quickly after he had ignored just about 4 months along with his newest damage to his proper knee.
However after such a lot of comebacks from such a lot of accidents in his six years with the Clippers, it was once tricky to grasp the place the rest truly stood with Leonard’s well being, or how lengthy the rest would closing.
Editor’s Selections
2 Comparable
Every week later, Leonard made his go back, and within the 37 video games he performed till the tip of the season, the Clippers went 26-11 — a 58-win tempo — emerging from 6th within the unforgiving Western Convention to tied for its third-best file. Leonard averaged 21.5 issues, 5.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists and just about 2 steals. He shot 41% from 3.
He has been electrical — and much more so thru those first two video games of the playoffs.
His efficiency in LA’s 105-102 win over the Denver Nuggets Monday night time in Sport 2 in their first-round playoff collection was once paying homage to his environment friendly, devastating brilliance all through the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 championship run.
He hit virtually each and every shot he took, scoring 39 issues on 15-for-19 capturing, even over and across the swarming Nuggets protection.
“He made difficult photographs,” Denver big name Nikola Jokic stated of Leonard. “However are they truly difficult photographs for him, a man who is been making the ones for one of these very long time?”
Via two video games on this collection, Leonard is averaging 30.5 issues on 71% capturing (24-for-34), together with 50% on 3-point makes an attempt (5-for-10). He has been similarly dominant defensively. In Sport 1, he held combatants to 2-of-5 (40%) from the sphere as the principle defender. In Sport 2, Leonard held combatants to 2-of-12 (16.7%).
It’s been a glimpse of the Leonard the Clippers idea they have been getting six years in the past.
However he has performed in best 266 of a conceivable 492 regular-season video games (54%) since becoming a member of the crew in probably the most largest loose agent coups in contemporary NBA historical past.
He has apparently gotten harm on the maximum devastating occasions. Proper after stretches of good play that gave the Clippers reason why to consider of their imaginative and prescient, and proper at an important occasions of the 12 months — the playoffs — when he has traditionally been at his splendid.
In 2021, he tore an ACL in a second-round collection towards the Utah Jazz. LA was once ready to complete off the collection with out him, however it did not have sufficient to overcome the Phoenix Suns within the convention finals. In 2023, he tore a meniscus within the first around. Remaining season he attempted to play in LA’s first-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks, however his knee irritation did not reply nicely to remedy and the crew needed to close him down.
The ones accidents, and the way in which he and the Clippers have load-managed him thru exhausting and most commonly secretive rehabs, have in large part turn into his tale: His occupation has turn into probably the most biggest what-ifs in trendy league historical past.
Kawhi Leonard returned on Jan. 4, and for the remainder 37 video games of the season, he displayed the type of dominance for which he was once as soon as identified — and the participant he nonetheless is. Bart Younger/NBAE by way of Getty Photographs
And when Paul George left as a loose agent closing summer time, it looked like the finishing of that tale.
However the video Leonard posted Dec. 27 introduced up a wholly new narrative. One that folks would possibly now not had been in a position to listen to on the time, or frankly, one the Clippers and their fanatics could be cautious of absolutely embracing, even now.
“I stay coming again,” Leonard stated within the video.
It is a easy message, however it incorporates multitudes. And it is one thing Leonard’s teammate James Harden hopes he begins getting extra credit score for. “He likes to hoop,” Harden stated.
If he did not, Harden defined, he would not have the ability to put himself throughout the unending hours or rehabilitation and strengthening and conditioning that is required to come back again from the kind of accidents he has had through the years.
“I believe like that about everyone that is within the league that is going thru one thing this is out in their fingers, the place they may be able to’t regulate, it is at all times the destructive,” Harden stated. “That is one thing we were given to reside with, I suppose, on the earth. However as for me, being just about him each and every unmarried day and seeing the paintings that he places in, you admire him.”
That is the tale Clippers trainer Tyronn Lue hopes other folks see now as Leonard has one way or the other made it the entire as far back as top shape, proper in time for a playoff run.
“That is what Kawhi lives for,” Lue stated. “He is wholesome for the playoffs, and we all know once we were given a wholesome Kawhi, we will win any collection.”
There’s, after all, no telling how lengthy Leonard will have the ability to care for this. He and the Clippers had been diligent and disciplined of their strategy to construction him up this season, totally eschewing any and all public or personal power for him to go back quicker from an offseason cleanup surgical procedure.
It’s in diametric opposition to closing season, when the Clippers and Leonard confronted power via the league’s new participant participation coverage and 65-game minimal for league awards.
From the play-in match to the NBA Finals, ESPN has you lined during the playoffs.
• Sport-by-game research: East | West
• Windhorst Brunson? Doncic? 6 stars eyeing a identify
• Shelburne Kawhi’s comeback foretold via a fishing advert?
• Pelton: Projecting every collection throughout the Finals
• Offseason information: What is subsequent for eradicated groups
• What to grasp: Information, agenda, rankings, highlights
This 12 months, getting him to the tip of the season wholesome and in top situation for a playoff run was once the one precedence. He sat out the primary 4 months of the season, slowly increase power and clearing benchmarks set for him sooner than making an attempt to perform a little extra.
When he in any case did come again in early January, the Clippers held him to strict minute limits, even preserving him out of remaining lineups. Whilst that would possibly appear murky or irritating to outdoor observers, the character of Leonard’s knee problems necessitate it. It isn’t one damage he is getting back from at this level — it is all of them. Each and every one leaves irritation and scar tissue. The impact has been cumulative, now not acute.
He has “excellent days and dangerous days,” as he says within the video. Not anything about his knees is predictable.
“It is the nature of the sport,” he says. Leonard has realized to reside with that uncertainty. “I am simply satisfied so that you can transfer,” he stated after Sport 2. The problem for everybody else is to simply accept that, too.
“I sat and watched those playoff video games and collection the previous two years,” Leonard stated. “So having the ability to be front-line available in the market, it simply feels excellent for me regardless of which manner the sport is going. That is what I am taking pleasure in. I simply wish to be available in the market and play and be at the entrance line with my crew.”
Every week after posting the primary video on the lake, Leonard launched phase two.
Sporting a take on field and a fishing rod, he walks towards the coastline. Birds fly and chirp overhead. The stereo is on.
When is he going to play? … Is he truly harm? What is going on right here?
“You listen them?” Leonard asks. “They prefer to come back and watch the thrill — and chirp.
“But if I display up, they at all times quiet.”
