The video Kawhi Leonard released across social media on Dec. 27 was well-produced, but cryptic.
The LA Clippers star drives up to a lake, listening to a message from someone who pleads with him to address the various tasks and responsibilities he’s got on his plate. Recovery, family, media engagements. He purses his lips and looks down at the phone, which is interrupting his tranquil escape.
As the voicemail continues, he gets out of the car and sees a fisherman. He walks toward the man.
Sitting next to a white bucket holding a basketball, and a small stereo, the man casts into the ripples.
We’ve got exciting news coming out of Los Angeles, the radio hums. The man turns up the volume.
Kawhi Leonard looks to be returning to the court pretty soon. Could be great …
“I knew I could find you here,” Leonard says to the fisherman. “You catch anything?”
Under a bucket hat, the fisherman is revealed to be another version of Leonard. He responds, “Nah, not yet. There’s been good days. There’s been bad days. But I keep coming back.
“It’s the nature of the game.”
It’s the kind of ad that’s designed to cause a stir. And this one did remind people that Leonard was still around, still working behind the scenes, and potentially coming back soon after he had missed nearly four months with his latest injury to his right knee.
But after so many comebacks from so many injuries in his six years with the Clippers, it was difficult to know where anything really stood with Leonard’s health, or how long anything would last.
A week later, Leonard made his return, and in the 37 games he played until the end of the season, the Clippers went 26-11 — a 58-win pace — rising from sixth in the unforgiving Western Conference to tied for its third-best record. Leonard averaged 21.5 points, 5.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists and nearly 2 steals. He shot 41% from 3.
He has been electric — and even more so through these first two games of the playoffs.
His performance in LA’s 105-102 win over the Denver Nuggets Monday night in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series was reminiscent of his efficient, devastating brilliance during the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 championship run.
He hit almost every shot he took, scoring 39 points on 15-for-19 shooting, even over and around the swarming Nuggets defense.
“He made tough shots,” Denver star Nikola Jokic said of Leonard. “But are they really tough shots for him, a guy who’s been making those for such a long time?”
Through two games in this series, Leonard is averaging 30.5 points on 71% shooting (24-for-34), including 50% on 3-point attempts (5-for-10). He has been equally dominant defensively. In Game 1, he held opponents to 2-of-5 (40%) from the field as the primary defender. In Game 2, Leonard held opponents to 2-of-12 (16.7%).
It has been a glimpse of the Leonard the Clippers thought they were getting six years ago.
But he has played in only 266 of a possible 492 regular-season games (54%) since joining the team in one of the biggest free agent coups in recent NBA history.
He has seemingly gotten hurt at the most devastating times. Right after stretches of brilliant play that gave the Clippers reason to believe in their vision, and right at the most important times of the year — the playoffs — when he has historically been at his best.
In 2021, he tore an ACL in a second-round series against the Utah Jazz. LA was able to finish off the series without him, but it didn’t have enough to beat the Phoenix Suns in the conference finals. In 2023, he tore a meniscus in the first round. Last season he tried to play in LA’s first-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks, but his knee inflammation didn’t respond well to treatment and the team had to shut him down.
Those injuries, and the way he and the Clippers have load-managed him through arduous and mostly secretive rehabs, have largely become his story: His career has become one of the greatest what-ifs in modern league history.
And when Paul George left as a free agent last summer, it seemed like the ending of that story.
But the video Leonard posted Dec. 27 offered up an entirely new narrative. One that people might not have been ready to hear at the time, or frankly, one the Clippers and their fans might be wary of fully embracing, even now.
“I keep coming back,” Leonard said in the video.
It’s a simple message, but it contains multitudes. And it’s something Leonard’s teammate James Harden hopes he starts getting more credit for. “He loves to hoop,” Harden said.
If he didn’t, Harden explained, he wouldn’t be able to put himself through the endless hours or rehabilitation and strengthening and conditioning that’s required to come back from the type of injuries he has had over the years.
“I feel like that about everybody that’s in the league that goes through something that is out of their hands, where they can’t control, it’s always the negative,” Harden said. “That’s something we got to live with, I guess, in the world. But as for me, being close to him every single day and seeing the work that he puts in, you appreciate him.”
That’s the story Clippers coach Tyronn Lue hopes people see now as Leonard has somehow made it all the way back to peak form, right in time for a playoff run.
“This is what Kawhi lives for,” Lue said. “He’s healthy for the playoffs, and we know when we got a healthy Kawhi, we can win any series.”
There is, of course, no telling how long Leonard will be able to maintain this. He and the Clippers have been diligent and disciplined in their approach to building him up this season, completely eschewing any and all public or private pressure for him to return sooner from an offseason cleanup surgery.
It is in diametric opposition to last season, when the Clippers and Leonard faced pressure by the league’s new player participation policy and 65-game minimum for league awards.
This year, getting him to the end of the season healthy and in peak condition for a playoff run was the only priority. He sat out the first four months of the season, slowly building up strength and clearing benchmarks set for him before attempting to do a little more.
When he finally did come back in early January, the Clippers held him to strict minute limits, even holding him out of closing lineups. While that might seem murky or frustrating to outside observers, the nature of Leonard’s knee issues necessitate it. It’s not one injury he’s coming back from at this point — it’s all of them. Each one leaves inflammation and scar tissue. The effect has been cumulative, not acute.
He has “good days and bad days,” as he says in the video. Nothing about his knees is predictable.
“It’s the nature of the game,” he says. Leonard has learned to live with that uncertainty. “I’m just happy to be able to move,” he said after Game 2. The challenge for everyone else is to accept that, too.
“I sat and watched these playoff games and series the past two years,” Leonard said. “So being able to be front-line out there, it just feels good for me no matter which way the game goes. That’s what I’m taking pride in. I just want to be out there and play and be on the front line with my team.”
A week after posting the first video at the lake, Leonard released part two.
Carrying a tackle box and a fishing rod, he walks toward the shoreline. Birds fly and chirp overhead. The stereo is on.
When is he going to play? … Is he really hurt? What’s going on here?
“You hear them?” Leonard asks. “They like to come and watch the fun — and chirp.
“But when I show up, they always quiet.”