How much have the past four postseasons hurt Kawhi Leonard's legacy?

03/05/2024 21:12

As much as Kawhi Leonard seems to be hurting right now, Clippers fans are undoubtedly feeling even worse after hearing the news that Leonard is officially ruled out for Friday night’s crucial Game 6 playoff matchup against the Dallas Mavericks.

It’s upsetting, but really nothing new at this point for Leonard in the postseason, and it seems time to raise a difficult question — how much have the past four postseasons hurt Kawhi Leonard’s legacy?

How did we get to this point?

Let’s flashback for a moment to Leonard’s falling out with the San Antonio Spurs and head coach Gregg Popovich. It was well documented at the time that Pop had lost his patience with Leonard’s lack of availability on the court. Mind you, this was just a few years removed from Leonard winning the NBA Finals MVP for the Spurs after his heroic efforts to help seal the championship in the 2013-2014 NBA season.

There was much debate throughout 2017-2018 about whether Leonard was giving everything he had to the team and doing everything possible to come back from a mysterious quad injury. There was also Popovich’s infamous post-playoff game praise of LaMarcus Aldridge — which some thought doubled as a passive-aggressive swipe at the still-injured Kawhi Leonard.

“LaMarcus has been a monster all year long,” Popovich said at the time. “He's led our team at both ends of the floor. He doesn't complain about a darn thing out on the court. He just plays through everything.”

Popovich continued, “I can't imagine being more proud of a player as far as playing through adversity and being there for his teammates night after night after night. He's been fantastic.”

Awk-ward. It’s no surprise then that Leonard forced his way out of San Antonio the following season. Although the superstar then seemed to turn things around in Toronto — when he led the talented-but-never-quite-over-the-hump Raptors to an unexpected and thrilling run to their own NBA championship. He also patched things up with Popovich.

All of this led fans to give Leonard the benefit of the doubt and assume his career was back on track. It also made Leonard the hottest free agent in some time when he hit the market in the 2019 offseason. And on cue, another perennially close-but-no-cigar team, the LA Clippers, hotly pursued this two-time NBA champion.

What did raise eyebrows was Leonard convincing the Clippers to mortgage their future in order to also acquire Paul George, a move that’s gained incredible scrutiny this season with the meteoric rise of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and all the other draft capital the Thunder got in that game-changing move.

But I digress. Let’s merely assess what’s happened on the court with Kawhi Leonard these past four seasons to determine the extent to which it should tarnish his legacy.

That first season with the Clippers resulted in an excruciating collapse in the 2020 NBA Western Conference Semifinals against the Denver Nuggets, after the Clippers were up 3 games to 1.

But fans chalked that one up to the weird pandemic bubble season, and figured much bigger things were to come for this exciting Clippers squad in years to come. Little did we know this would be the last playoff series which would actually feature Leonard in all of the games.

In the 2021 Western Conference Semifinals, Leonard was injured in Game 4 against the Utah Jazz in what was initially suspected to be a right knee sprain. He didn’t return to that series and it was later revealed Leonard underwent surgery for a partially torn right ACL.

The Clippers somehow overcame this blow to make their first-ever Western Conference Finals against the Phoenix Suns, but they were clearly a Kawhi Leonard away from ever winning that series.

Recovery from the partial ACL tear then kept Leonard out of the entire 2021-2022 NBA season, even though it was at one time considered a possibility he would return during the season.

What about his hot start to this season?

Finally, this season, he came out looking strong and healthy for the first half of the season, which mind-bogglingly was enough of a sample size for the Clippers to sign him to a three-year, $153 million extension past this season.

Once again Clippers fans tried to look on the bright side and thought that maybe Leonard’s health prognosis was looking good and this would finally, with the addition of James Harden, be the Clippers’ breakthrough season.

That proved wishful thinking once again when yet another mysterious right knee injury landed Leonard on the injured list for the last eight games of this regular season, and now Games 1, 4, 5 and tonight’s Game 6 against the Mavericks.

Leonard at this point has bounced in and out of so many key playoff games, he’s like the bizarro version of that fateful buzzer beater he put up against the 76ers in Game 7 of the classic 2019 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals. Instead of bouncing in-out-in-out-in-out-and-ultimately-in like that ball did, Leonard always seems to wind up out of the lineup when the stakes are highest.

Clippers fans have given Leonard the benefit of the doubt many times over the past four seasons, but after this latest knee injury, it feels fair to once again question Leonard’s durability and willingness to play through nagging injures.

Maybe it’s a Clippers thing — injuries certainly derailed promising postseasons many times in the Chris Paul, Blake Griffin era, which was long before Leonard got there.

But there’s just always so much vagueness and confusion surrounding Leonard’s injuries that it’s really hard to know what to believe at this point. Maybe Kawhi Leonard‘s inflammation is serious enough to warrant keeping him out of the Clippers‘ elimination-facing Game 6. But there’s no question that, despite being a two-time NBA champion and two-time NBA Finals MVP, the past four postseasons have at least partially torn not only his knee but also his legacy.

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