The Los Angeles Clippers were full of optimism over clinching the NBA championship this season, but the persistent injury problems for Kawhi Leonard have poured cold water over those hopes.
An injury is never good news, especially for Kawhi, who has been suffering from injuries for the past five years. “I think he should think about retiring,” said Kendrick Perkins, a former player and now the league’s leading opinionator.
Kawhi Leonard was, for a time, the league’s great alternative to the two modern dominators, LeBron James and Stephen Curry. He won the Defender of the Year award twice and led San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Raptors to two rings in the 2014 and 2019 seasons. For physical qualities, coolness in decision making and ability to take over in dangerous contexts, Leonard was quite a superstar.
But strange decisions, injuries and mistrust in the face of different medical treatments generated a strange scenario. It has been almost 10 years full of doubts and inconveniences. In 2014, he tore a ligament in his hand. In 2016 came hell with a tendinopathy in the quadriceps. The most serious came in 2021 with his cruciate ligament tear, and then suffered a meniscus injury last year.
His future has a question mark hovering over it. Perkins has thrown out the retirement issue, though not everyone agrees. “You’re not the right guy to ask a Hall of Famer to do that,” stressed Chandler Parsons, ‘Perk’s’ partner on the TV show. Although the background is the same, the doubts with a legend.
