Kawhi Leonard is not going to play in Game 5 of the Los Angeles Clippers’ first-round collection vs. the Phoenix Suns on Saturday resulting from a knee sprain, the group introduced. Leonard initially suffered the damage in Game 1 and performed by way of it in Game 2, however was unable to go within the Clippers’ Game 3 and Game 4 defeats.
Clippers president Lawrence Frank informed reporters previous to Game 3 that Leonard is “extraordinarily disenchanted” that he will not have the ability to go well with up, however would not go into additional element concerning the severity of his damage.
It stays unclear precisely when Leonard aggravated his knee, as he by no means went to the locker room and performed over 80 mixed minutes in Games 1 and a pair of. Clippers beat author Law Murray instructed this play from the third quarter of Game 1, which was just like the sequence the place Leonard tore his ACL within the 2021 playoffs. But, once more, that’s only a guess.
Leonard sat out of the complete 2021-22 season to rehab his knee and had been load managing all of it season lengthy. However, the Clippers have gone on report that these absences are resulting from a authentic damage and never a case of load administration. He missed 20 of the Clippers’ first 27 video games and the one time he performed greater than 5 consecutive video games was when he performed six in a row on both aspect of the All-Star break.
The plan gave the impression to be working to perfection. Leonard was terrific within the common season when he did play, averaging 23.8 factors, 6.5 rebounds and three.9 assists on 51.2/41.6/87.1 taking pictures splits. That development continued within the first two video games of this collection, as Leonard put up a mixed 69 factors, 13 rebounds, 12 assists and 4 steals on 24-of-44 from the sector to assist the Clippers steal home-court benefit.
This new damage is unrelated to the torn ACL, per Wojnarowski, although they did each occur in his proper knee.
Heading into this collection, the Clippers have been already with out Paul George, who sprained his knee throughout a March 21 sport towards the Oklahoma City Thunder. While he’s on the comeback path and has restarted on-court actions, he isn’t anticipated to play within the first spherical, in keeping with Wojnarowski.
George’s absence made the Clippers sizeable underdogs towards the high-powered Suns led by Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, however after incomes a break up in Phoenix the Clippers had some hope. That has now been considerably drained by the Leonard information. There’s nonetheless a protracted option to go within the collection, however as soon as once more the Clippers have been dealt some severe dangerous luck within the playoffs.
