Kawhi Leonard To Miss Next Two Games As LA Clippers Struggle To Find Consistency

Before the LA Clippers tipped off with the Houston Rockets on Monday, head coach Tyronn Lue revealed Kawhi Leonard would not travel with the team on their upcoming Texas road trip.

With Leonard ruled out for the next two games due to right knee injury management, it will mark seven total missed games to begin the 2022-23 season. The Clippers, currently 2-4 and starving for lineup consistency, will head to Houston and San Antonio with some early adversity staring them in the face.

This week-long absence for Leonard started Oct. 25, as he was intending to play in Oklahoma City to begin a mini-series with the Thunder. Shortly after warmups, he reported some stiffness in his right knee to the Clippers’ training staff. From there, Leonard was told he would be resting that evening as the team took a precautionary approach and sent him back to Los Angeles to get treatment and recover.

Despite the national reaction (predictably) going overboard with calling out Leonard for his lack of availability, the Clippers have maintained this isn’t a major setback – and it’s not his choice.

“He’s frustrated – he wants to be out on the floor,” Lue said Monday when asked about Leonard’s situation. “Then, not being on the floor, he can’t travel. He wants to travel, but the doctor said it’s not the right thing to do right now. With the stiffness and what he’s going through. He’s just frustrated. From putting all the work in the last 15 months and to get to this point, and not being where he wants to be right now physically.”

According to Lue in a pregame session last week, knee stiffness and soreness isn’t entirely uncommon when a player is coming back from ACL rehab. After playing 42 total minutes across two games, the Clippers’ star was hoping to ease back into a normal workload and get back to those dominant performances we saw in the 2021 campaign.

Lue has repeatedly mentioned how anxious Leonard is to step on the floor and eliminate his minutes restriction, which was around 22 minutes before this string of missed games. At the same time, both parties understand this will be a slow process. More importantly, nobody in the organization – Leonard included – is focused on the sprint over the marathon.

By all accounts, everyone is on the same page when it comes to prioritizing the long-term health of their stars (as in, six months from now) versus risking it all in late October.

Still, in the meantime, they feel pressure to clean up their sloppiness and show signs of life offensively. Because so far, the style and execution have looked nothing like a Ty Lue team. They aren’t penetrating and forcing the defense to rotate. They aren’t creating open threes at a high enough rate. For the most part, their offensive flow isn’t quick and decisive enough to give opponents enough to think about.

It hasn’t been possible for the Clippers to build any of the good habits they’ve discussed over the last month, on either end of the floor.

“The whole league goes through it,” Lue said about players being in and out of the lineup. “It’s not something you want to get used to, but we’ve been having to do that as of late. It’s a little different (this year). When you build your system around PG and Kawhi, and now with Kawhi being out – like last year, we knew they weren’t going to be (available), so we had to change our foundation and how we played offensively. And we just changed the whole structure. But now, just with the circumstances with Kawhi, it’s a little different.”

But this group isn’t looking for sympathy.

“That’s no excuse,” Lue added. “Like I said, the whole league goes through it. We just happen to be one of the teams that go through it all the time. But that’s no excuse. We got to be better, and we understand that. And that’s where it comes down to the players. We just have to be better, and we can figure this out.”

Following their ugly 21-point loss at home to New Orleans, the Clippers ranked dead last in halfcourt offensive rating. They were generating just 84.8 points per 100 possessions in the halfcourt, almost three points worse than the Lakers.

Lue, tasked with coaching a rotation full of high-quality role players, doesn’t feel they should rely solely on Paul George’s shot creation to get them out of the rut.

“I think we just have to do it by committee,” he said. “I think every night is going to be different. If you saw the style of basketball we played last year, I don’t think you can point to one particular person and say we’re going to get this every single night. But if we play the right way and get into the paint, a lot of guys will touch the basketball and get open shots.”

Lue acknowledged Leonard is trying to make his way back as quickly as possible to help them correct the mistakes and get back into a rhythm.

“He’s getting better, and that’s the most important thing.”