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The Los Angles Clippers open up their season Thursday night time vs. their cross-town rivals, the Los Angles Lakers. Regardless that the battle of LA appears to tackle extra significance than most common season video games, the Clippers have an even bigger aim in thoughts in terms of the 2022-23 season, and that’s to win the primary championship in staff historical past.
That mindset could have one thing to do with the report from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports activities that got here out at this time about Kawhi Leonard’s standing tonight.
Los Angeles Clippers have been contemplating the potential of bringing Kawhi Leonard off the bench to begin the season with the intention to handle his minutes, league sources inform @YahooSports.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) October 20, 2022
That additionally aligns with what Coach Ty Lue mentioned about Kawhi after day 1 of coaching camp.
We’ve got a aim in thoughts of what we would like these guys to play and so I’m not going to allow you to guys know that, however simply make certain we do the suitable factor, simply being sensible and trusting the info that we’ve acquired again from these guys and simply ensuring their physique’s feeling properly, how they’re feeling, after which we are able to proceed to slowly, slowly progress. However we simply bought to ensure proper now we’re doing proper by these guys and even when they wish to play extra and do extra we are able to’t enable that to occur.
Leonard missed all final yr as he recovered from a torn ACL and hasn’t performed since June 14th, 2021, which was Sport 4 of the Western Convention Semifinals vs. the Jazz, and might be eased again into the lineup. Leonard solely made two appearances within the preseason, taking part in a mean of 16.5 minutes per sport. Nonetheless, with the addition of John Wall, the Clippers could also be extra cautious with Leonard than standard, because the staff feels it has sufficient depth to sustained shorter minutes from its All-Star Ahead.
Additionally it is not remarkable to have a celebrity come off the bench after an extended layoff because of harm. We noticed it final yr with the Warriors and Steph Curry. Steph got here off the bench vs. the Denver Nuggets within the first spherical of the playoffs after being out the ultimate 12 video games of the common season with a bone bruise and sprained ligament. The philosophy was the identical as it is going to be with Leonard: to ease your celebrity into their common workload.
The Clippers are taking part in the lengthy sport in terms of Leonard, who has performed a little bit over 100 video games within the final three seasons, even when meaning not having their finest participant on the courtroom full-time vs. their cross-town rival.
This looks like a sensible transfer by the Clips and hopefully Kawhi will keep away from any hamstring soreness like his Lakers’s rival Russell Westbrook who didn’t take properly to the change in circumstances.
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