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Wow. That is less games than I thought/remember he was out for. I guess since he's not on the Spurs anymore, I didn't realize how little he's played.dude played 178 games in the last 5 years
that's a little more than 2 seasons. Uncle Dennis is destroying his career and I love it
When did the initial injury happen? In the playoffs against the Jazz? What was the original diagnosis and what did the injury end up being?
lolololol
kawhitter cursed the clippers
Spurs fans still triggered by Kawhi,,,,
Ahh where have you been the last 30 years or whatever it's been? People used to talk about the Clippers being cursed well before Kawhi showed up, so if you believe in any kind of curse, that was something said about them well before he got there. Not that I believe in it, I think it was mostly due to Sterling being a terrible and cheap ass owner that bought all that bad luck on himself, always letting players go and not wanting to pay anyone long term.
What I do find kind of ironic is with Kawhi's injury history, he chose to go to a team for a rep of being cursed. Obviously he didn't/doesn't believe in that prior to him going there, but now that he's been there for a bit and injuries have piled up, it's kind of funny/strange it has turned out this way thus far.
In my opinion, the Raptors were the perfect spot for him and he threw that away. He made a terrible decision leaving a championship team without at least trying once to repeat with them. Leaving a team that was built around him with great complimentary players to give him the best chance to succeed, I just don't know what he was thinking. Sure he wanted to go back home to LA, but winning the Championship and fitting as well as he did there, you know, you can change your mind and choose to stay. Just because he had it in mind before he went the Raptors to go to LA the following year, didn't mean he couldn't have changed his mind and stayed at least one more season with the Raptors.
If he never wins another ring, or his career goes down the toilet from here, I hope he regrets what he did to both the Spurs and Raptors (I doubt he will). He's bought all this on himself. If this current report/comment from another poster here is true about Kawhi saying the Clippers misdiagnosed his current injury, it seems he's always looking to blame someone else for his injuries instead of his own body breaking down on him.
Edit : What was the misdiagnosis anyway? I remember them saying in the playoffs last year that is was a small/partial tear of the ACL. Was it actually a full tear?
Last edited by Ice009; 04-16-2022 at 01:07 AM.
There probably wasn’t a misdiagnosis, just one that his Group didn’t want to hear.
Did the Spurs dodge the bullet on Kawhi? If Uncle Dennis didn’t happen and Kawhi ended up resigning with the Spurs, wouldn’t he be Spurs problem now with his debilitating condition? I already forgot if the Spurs we’re going to offer him a Max then and would that have been catastrophic for the Spurs? Or would the Spurs trade him in good conscience knowing what they knew? In hindsight having Demar and the assets/picks that the Spurs now have a better consolation?
There were conflicting reports both ways as to whether they did, were, or weren't going to make the max offer and quite frankly I don't know which to believe. But I think it probably wouldn't have had any impact either way, cause neph is a homer and was always heading back to SoCal.
I think Uncle face could have probably convinced him to stay had the Spurs let him have what he wanted, which was pure extortion.
The unforgivable stuff for me is how they leaked lies and tried to trash the Spurs and how the media just ate it up. How he went AWOL on his team and coaches, and how he didn't even have the decency to sit with his teammates. Unacceptable . neph.
Management: "Time to get back on the court, Kawhi."
Autist: "UH ohhh... Time for Wheel of Fortune. Definitely time for Wheel of Fortune."
Kawhi is as big a head case as Ron Artest or Vernon Maxwell were. A player you can really count on - except when you can't.
So it’s better that he’s somebody’s problem than Spurs?
isnt he up for a max contract extension? if ur ballmer, might as well cut ur losses
He already got his, this past off season. 4 years at 178M.
Why is this a question?
Nah in hindsight Spurs dodged a bullet with this guy if he’s gonna be this much problem
Keep up bubba.
C'mon now.
The injury the spurs CORRECTLY diagnosed was some kind of long term leg/thigh condition that needed to be monitored and treated for possibly the rest of his career
but he didnt want to accept it and instead tried to blame the spurs medical staff
i cant quite remember the exact name of his injury (other posters im sure can chime in here)
and if you look at the past few seasons…
and kawhitter being the player that introduced “load management” into the nba lexicon
you can plainly see that the spurs medical staff was 100% spot on.
**found it -here it is;
"The Spurs have always called the injury quadriceps tendinopathy, which is a disease of the tendon that has a degenerative effect on the muscle by keeping it in a constant state of exhaustion."
Why did that require hindsight
He’s an idiot with a nose picking avatar.
Hahahahaha lol. Same story different team.
I guess it’s for the best that Kawhi is no longer with the Spurs. He would’ve been Spurs problem now with his condition, the Spurs held hostage in a big contract. No youth rebuild that now seems to be on track. I don’t know if he would’ve rung with Aldridge instead the Raptors, that would be the big question.
That condition would require the resting he has needed. Spurs wanted him to play through the pain and he wouldn’t have any of it, he wanted at the time to recover to 100%. It’s possible he won’t ever be exactly as he was b4 the injury though he’s still a great player when healthy, but no longer a DPOY candidate even when healthy, so you see his intensity is not the same.
I also remember reading a leak that he had calcification in the tendon… I remember that because the jokes at the time were that he was growing bones/teeth in the thigh.
This is sort of true, as far as I remember. The Spurs didn't want Leonard to play through the pain rather than rest. They believed no amount of rest would fix the condition and rather that the rest of his career would be about pain management. Kawhi did want to rest more, but his people wanted that because they believed he had an accute injury that could be completely treated. Kawhi's actually had to do what the Spurs said he'd do, which is to manage the pain but also take games off. My guess is that Leonard could have played more than half the season in 2017-2018 had he accepted the Spurs' diagnosis and wanted to stay. It's possible that his ACL injury had something to do with him having his own medical team look after his leg rather than the Clippers doctors. The tears are considered freak injuries, but it being so close to a damaged area makes me wonder if it was some overcompensation that caused it.
Regardless, Kawhi didn't want to accept that he would be a part-time player if he followed the Spurs' suggestion. It's understandable. He was one of the best players in the NBA, and he'd have no chance at MVP and maybe even DPOY or All-NBA games if he only played 60 or so games a year for the Spurs. Dude was trying to make his own brand, whether for himself or because of the people around them. He was a guy in his 20s being told that he'd effectively be 10 years older from a maintenance perspective. I get it. Obviously it doesn't excuse exactly how ty Leonard was, but I get why he didn't agree with the diagnosis and why he wanted to leave. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that injury basically killed his spirit. He'll probably make the HoF due mostly to his Spurs' and Raptors accomplishments. But what could his career have been had he never had the knee condition? He might have ended up being a GOAT candidate for all we know.
Very interesting take, and also quite possibly very accurate account of things looking back at it.
As for you last couple of sentences, I really did think Kawhi was on his way to a dominant run in that 2017 season that might put him in the conversation had he stayed healthy and stayed with the Spurs. Man, up until he sprained his ankle against Houston and then the follow-up Zaza take out in the Warriors series, Kawhi was playing amazing basketball. He was playing high intensity defense and also was playing amazing on offense. There's no point in his career where he combined both defense and offense as well as that second half of the 2017 season & playoffs. I don't know if he was in pain in game 1 of the Warriors series (not sure if his ankle was still hurting and he tried to gut it out for the Spurs), but despite the sprained ankle he was still looking dominant. He was single handedly wrecking the Warriors' best team of all time in game 1. I still wonder/wish we could have seen if the Spurs could have knocked out probably the Warriors' strongest team of all time with the way not just Kawhi was playing, but all his teammates. Everyone was beginning to feed off of him and playing great up until he was taken out. It changed the whole dynamic of the team and series when he was out. The Spurs were firing on all cylinders up to that point. Danny Green, LaMarcus, all those guys were playing great off of him. David Lee was playing some of the most inspired basketball of his career (I really loved the way David played that season for the Spurs), Pau Gasol was still playing well too. I still hate the way it all finished up with the Spurs. That Warriors series was the ultimate "what if" series for me.
Anyone know what year did the original quad injury occurred? Does anyone remember? I seem to recall reading somewhere that Kawhi thinks they misdiagnosed it in a previous season. Not sure if it was 2017 or even the 2016 season. Either way, looks like the Spurs were right about it being chronic and him having to learn to play through it, but like Chinook said, I guess it's understandable that Kawhi at his age (was he 26 at the time?) didn't want to hear anything about that.
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