by Paul Teetor
Kawhi Leonard withdrew from the USA Olympic Team Thursday, thereby avoiding a public relations fiasco for the LA Clippers.
The unanswered question is whether he did it voluntarily or was pushed into it by Clipper executives who realized that the news coming out of the Olympic Training Camp in Las Vegas – that Kawhi was ramping up to play in the Paris Olympics after missing the last eight games of the regular season and most of the playoffs with a sore knee – was starting to make Clippers fans irritated.
Some of them were even outraged.
On Tuesday the front page of the LA Times greatly diminished sports section featured a color picture of Kawhi making a move on his fellow Olympian, Anthony “Ant Man” Edwards, at the Olympic training camp.
The picture was controversial – to say the least – among Clippers fans.
“Why the hell isn’t he trying to get ready for next season?” Kim Hughes of Redondo Beach asked while shooting baskets at Live Oak Park Friday afternoon. “I feel he owes us at least that much. Our Olympic team is going to cruise to the gold medal with or without Kawhi. They don’t need him to be healthy, but we do.”
Indeed, it feels like Clippers fans have been waiting five years for Kawhi to get healthy, ever since he first signed with the Clippers as a free agent back in the summer of 2019. He has missed almost half the Clippers games over that five-year span, and it was a bit shocking when a few months ago the Clippers handed the 33-year-old wing man a $152 million contract extension for the next three years.
Players his age with an extensive injury history rarely get that kind of lucrative deal. But the Clippers felt the need to have a legit star heading into next season as they move into their magnificent new venue, the $2 billion Intuit Dome in Inglewood. They desperately want him to be in the starting lineup on opening night.
So it was a bit of a surprise that Kawhi was prioritizing the Olympics over getting ready for next season, but he explained it was not a question of priorities, it was all a question of timing – bad timing, for him, for the Clippers and for their fans.
“I’m just able to play right now although I wasn’t able to play this spring,” he said Monday. “I’m happy to go out there with these talented players and compete against the best in the world.”
And he said he was sorry he wasn’t able to meet the fans expectations.
“I tried to play as much as possible,” he said. “The knee felt great at first, and then at some point I couldn’t go anymore. I tried the best that I could, but it’s just my journey. You know I didn’t want to be in that situation, but I gotta take it for what it is and just keep going.”
As the public fallout from those comments took hold, Clippers execs – including President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank – traveled to Vegas to see for themselves how Kawhi’s knee looked.
Two days later everything changed and it was announced that Kawhi was leaving the Olympic team because his surgically repaired right knee was acting up.
“Kawhi has been ramping up for the Olympics over the past several weeks and had a few strong practices in Las Vegas,” said a statement issued by Team USA. “He felt ready to compete. However, he respects that USA basketball and the Clippers determined that it’s in his best interests to spend the remainder of the summer preparing for the upcoming NBA season.”
Translation, from the Clippers point of view: We’ve already spent over $200 million on this guy and we don’t want to waste the $152 million he’s still got coming to him. The optics of him practicing for the Olympics after sitting out most of our first-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks was just too much to try to spin for our fans. So we spared him – and the team – from the fans’ wrath should he not be able to start next season healthy.
Having already lost his co-star Paul George – he signed as a free agent with the Philadelphia 76ers last week – the Clippers are desperate to avoid falling to the bottom of the stacked Western Conference next season.
In addition to strongly “suggesting” that Kawhi abandon his Olympic dream and concentrate on earning his $152 million over the next three years, the Clippers also signed James Harden to a two-year, $70 million contract this week.
It was far less than the four-year, $212 million contract the soon-to-be 35-year-old was asking for, but he’ll just have to make do with the $70 million and be glad the Clippers didn’t make him go to the open market, like they did with Russell Westbrook.
After testing the market, Westbrook crawled back to the Clippers and signed a two-year deal for $8 million.
So, the Clippers Big Four – Kawhi, Paul George, James Harden and Russell Westbrook – is now a Big Three. Last season they couldn’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs.
Next season, without Paul George, they’ll be lucky to make the playoffs at all.
Bronny Gets Paid
Just before summer league started this week, the Lakers handed Bronny James a 4-year, $8 million contract. It’s very rare for a player picked that late – 55th overall – to be given a contract at all, at least until they’ve shown something special in summer league.
Four games into the summer league, it’s become clear why the Lakers and GM Rob Pelinka were so eager to give him a contract: if they had waited until summer league to start, there’s no way they could spin the contract as being justified by his level of play.
To put it kindly: Bronny should have stayed in college for at least two more years. Against his peers – recent draft picks and young vets of the NBA still seeking a foothold in the league – Bronny has looked small, over-matched and under-skilled.
His first game was so bad – he shot 2 for 9 – that he was kept out of the Lakers second game. And in his third game he shot 3-for-14 — including a horrendous 0-for-8 from three-point land, which was supposed to be his strength – and he missed an easy dunk and turned the ball over three times.
Four games in, he is shooting 7-for-31, 0-of-14 on three pointers.
Yikes!
To be fair, the young man should never have been put in this position. But LeBron’s desire to play with his son – without regard to his son’s feelings about it, or the negative impact on the Lakers – was so strong that neither the Lakers nor Bronny could do anything to stop it once LeBron got the crazy idea in his head.
As a player, LeBron is second only to the great Michael Jordan. But as a shadow General Manager, he is a complete disaster. Up till now, most of the damage he has done is to his team and his reputation.
But now he is doing damage to his own son – and that is something no father should ever do.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. ER
