In front of his locker, a red-and-black pair of his New Balance signature sneaker sat expectantly.
Yet the All-Star wing around whom the Clippers have oriented their franchise for four years did not suit up — and the Clippers left their 129-124 loss against Phoenix in Game 3 not knowing whether he will again this season.
Leonard sprained his right knee late in the team’s series-opening victory against the Suns on Saturday and played 39 minutes in a loss two days later. But when “things didn’t get better, they got worse,” as president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said, the team sidelined him.
Frank echoed what a team source not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said earlier Thursday: That Leonard is considered day-to-day, his availability to return for Saturday’s Game 4 hinging on the re-evaluations of his knee. Complicating matters is the tight turnaround, with the next game tipping off just 38 hours after Thursday’s ended.
The team believes the injury isn’t related to the torn anterior cruciate ligament that sidelined him the entire 2021-22 season, though Frank declined to offer details about the severity of the sprain and what benchmarks Leonard will need to pass in order to be cleared.
“You can imagine he’s extremely, extremely disappointed he is not going to play tonight,” Frank said before tip-off. “He desperately wants to play.”
The Clippers replaced Leonard’s stoicism with a frenetic energy that peaked while employing lineups without a center for the final nine minutes, and solely guards for the final nine. Flying around, they tried trapping and shooting their way out of a 10-point deficit with six minutes to play, even with Phoenix’s tallest players, Deandre Ayton and Kevin Durant, towering over double teams.
Size mattered. Phoenix grabbed eight offensive rebounds in the final quarter. Protecting a six-point lead with 51 seconds left, the 7-foot Ayton grabbed an offensive rebound and flipped it to Devin Booker, who scored and reached 45 points on his foul shot.
It was just enough to fend off the final charges and take a 2-1 lead in this best-of-seven series. Norman Powell scored 42 points, becoming the fifth player in Clippers history to register a 40-point postseason game.
Durant added 28 for Phoenix, while Russell Westbrook scored 30 for the Clippers and Bones Hyland scored 20 off the bench. Phoenix took 46 free throws — their most since 2017 — 21 more than the Clippers, a disparity that left several Clippers rolling their eyes. It also threw off the Clippers’ series-long plan to find an edge through physicality. Coach Tyronn Lue “loved our fight,” rued some bad fouls, and the calls that “just didn’t go our way.”
Lue learned Leonard had aggravated the knee Wednesday evening, but said he did not know Leonard would be sidelined until shortly before the team’s shootaround Thursday morning, about 10 hours before tip-off.
“It’s very deflating, Lue said. “I think moreso for Kawhi. … He works extremely hard to get to this point and then you have something like this happen.”
“If he’s not back we got to rally around each other,” Westbrook said.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
At shootaround, as adjustments to the game plan were installed, players called the mood upbeat despite their thinning roster. All-Star wing Paul George “continues to work his butt off and make progress daily” from his right knee sprain suffered in late March, Frank said, but remains out without a timetable to return.
Yet the mood didn’t change the reality of the enormous void left by the absence of Leonard, who had scored or assisted on 45% of the Clippers’ points during the first two games and guarded Suns star Durant on a team-high 53 possessions.
It was apt that the blue T-shirts draped across the arena seats as a giveaway bore the message “All Hands.”
Their margin for error was already slim enough without George. Without Leonard, too, they would need contributions from everyone to survive Game 3, let alone the rest of the series.
Within five minutes, starting Terance Mann in place of Leonard, they had as many turnovers as points (six), a stretch that showed the limitations of energy alone.
When Lue noted before tip-off that he would be forced to “do some things different,” he was not kidding.
Former starting forward Marcus Morris Sr., who had not played since March 25, checked in late in the first quarter and banked a buzzer-beating three-pointer to force a 27-all tie. To start the second quarter, Morris stayed in as part of a lineup that featured another little-used forward who had not played in the series’ first two games — Robert Covington.
Provided openings to pull ahead by Phoenix throughout the first half, the Clippers trailed by three after repeated failures to take advantage. Before halftime, the problem was turnovers. Of their 12 first-half turnovers, Westbrook was responsible for five.
The source of their struggles that eventually put them in a 13-point, third-quarter hole was their inability to defend without fouling. A relatively paltry share of Phoenix’s regular-season offense came at the free-throw line, where they ranked in the league’s bottom third.
Yet the Suns attempted 21 third-quarter free throws, 17 more than the Clippers, and only a few of the fouls were intentional as the Clippers targeted poor shooter Bismack Biyombo, preferring he take two free throws than Durant or Booker taking one jumper.
It was one of the ways the Clippers tried to manufacture and advantage where few otherwise existed. The gambits ultimately did not work. And as the game ended, Leonard left as he arrived, with all eyes watching his every step.