Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
The Clippers are reportedly considering bringing Kawhi Leonard off the bench to start the season as they ease him back into a normal workload,
The Los Angles Clippers open up their season Thursday night vs. their cross-town rivals, the Los Angles Lakers. Even though the battle of LA seems to take on more significance than most regular season games, the Clippers have a bigger goal in mind when it comes to the 2022-23 season, and that is to win the first championship in team history.
That mindset may have something to do with the report from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports that came out today about Kawhi Leonard’s status tonight.
Los Angeles Clippers have been considering the possibility of bringing Kawhi Leonard off the bench to start the season in order to manage his minutes, league sources tell @YahooSports.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) October 20, 2022
That also aligns with what Coach Ty Lue said about Kawhi after day 1 of training camp.
We have a goal in mind of what we want those guys to play and so I’m not going to let you guys know that, but just make sure we do the right thing, just being smart and trusting the data that we’ve received back from those guys and just making sure their body’s feeling well, how they’re feeling, and then we can continue to slowly, slowly progress. But we just got to make sure right now we’re doing right by those guys and even if they want to play more and do more we can’t allow that to happen.
Leonard missed all last year as he recovered from a torn ACL and hasn’t played since June 14th, 2021, which was Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals vs. the Jazz, and will be eased back into the lineup. Leonard only made two appearances in the preseason, playing an average of 16.5 minutes per game. However, with the addition of John Wall, the Clippers may be more cautious with Leonard than usual, as the team feels it has enough depth to sustained shorter minutes from its All-Star Forward.
It is also not unheard of to have a superstar come off the bench after a long layoff due to injury. We saw it last year with the Warriors and Steph Curry. Steph came off the bench vs. the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs after being out the final 12 games of the regular season with a bone bruise and sprained ligament. The philosophy was the same as it will be with Leonard: to ease your superstar into their regular workload.
The Clippers are playing the long game when it comes to Leonard, who has played a little over 100 games in the last three seasons, even if that means not having their best player on the court full-time vs. their cross-town rival.
This seems like a smart move by the Clips and hopefully Kawhi will avoid any hamstring soreness like his Lakers’s rival Russell Westbrook who didn’t take well to the change in circumstances.
