REPORT: Kawhi Leonard’s $152 million agreement with the Clippers appears terrible after his last postseason injury.

The Los Angeles Clippers defeated the Dallas Mavericks in Game 4 on Sunday, tying their first-round series at 2-2, despite the absence of superstar Kawhi Leonard, who missed his second game of the series due to knee soreness. There is no schedule for his comeback, and he is out indefinitely.

Stop me if you have heard this before.

Since arriving in Los Angeles in the summer of 2019 as a championship mercenary following his success in Toronto, Leonard has appeared in only 28 of the Clippers’ 41 postseason games. Aside from 2020, when Leonard played all 13 games in Los Angeles’ second-round journey, he has missed several games in each of his last three postseasons.

In 2021, the Clippers appeared to be a top-tier title candidate until Leonard tore his ACL in Game 4 of the conference semifinals against Utah, ruling him out for the rest of the playoffs and the entire season.

Last season, Leonard averaged 35 points through the first two games of the Clippers’ first-round series against Phoenix, then he tore his MCL and missed the next three as L.A. was eliminated in five.

Who knows if we’ll see him again this postseason, or how long the Clippers can last without him. At this point, you would be a fool to think Leonard can be depended on to make it through a full postseason in good health. And if he can’t do that, the Clippers cannot compete for a title. And if the Clippers cannot compete for a title, it becomes pretty hard to justify the three-year, $152 million extension they handed Leonard this past January.

Oh, did you forget about that? The Clippers recently signed up for three more years of this. They let themselves be duped after Leonard remained fit for the first three months of action. This is a typical stock market gaffe. You enable yourself to assume that whatever is happening now will continue.

Wrong.

It was only a matter of time before Leonard got injured again, and the situation will only worsen over the next three seasons. By the end of this latest contract, Leonard will be 35 years old, and the Clippers will have paid him just shy of $350 million over six seasons.

And if you’re paying all that money to Leonard, then you pretty much have to pay James Harden, who’s a free agent this summer, in addition to George, who’s also a free agent. What’s the alternative? To let them walk for nothing and open up a new arena with a hobbled Leonard and a bunch of C-listers?

They have no choice but to go all-in, yet again, with the Leonard-George tandem that has now added Harden, because on top of all the actual cash they’ve paid these guys, they also bear the burden of the trade that brought George, who was a package deal with Leonard, to Los Angeles from Oklahoma City, which cost them Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is going to be on the MVP short list for the next decade.

The Clippers are pouring good money after bad. Leonard has already been paid in full. SGA no longer exists. Giving Leonard another $150 million, plus whatever ridiculous money they’re going to throw at Harden and George to keep this pipe dream alive this summer, will not bring any of it back.

They should have cut their losses and looked into trading Leonard and/or George. Instead, they sacrificed the remainder of their future cash for Harden, triple down on a terrible hand. They now owe the Thunder their next six first-round draft picks, either directly or through swaps, in exchange for the remainder of the George trade with the 76ers. When they overpay Harden and give George, who will have many competing offers, at least what Leonard received, they will be stuck with an even worse hand than they started with.

It’s a mess, and if George has more foresight than the Clippers and asks himself, ‘Do I really want to bank the remaining years of my prime on a co-star who is practically likely to be injured in the playoffs?’, it’ll get much worse.

Because unlike Harden, George will have options. Nobody will pay Harden what the Clippers are almost compelled to pay him given their current level of investment, but George might go for the 76ers, who have max room, leaving the Clippers with two over-the-hill superstars making prime-superstar money.

George has to be considering it, right? This just hasn’t worked with Leonard. They’ve only played 181 of a possible 410 regular-season games together over five years. That’s 44%. Meaning more than half the time George takes the court with the Clippers, Leonard isn’t with him. He’s either been injured or load managing in an effort to avoid injuries, only to get injured in the payoffs anyway.

I’m going to say it again: This is a disaster for the Clippers. It’s nobody’s fault, necessarily. Leonard can’t help his failing body, and in the summer of 2019, there wasn’t single a team in the NBA that wouldn’t have thrown every organizational egg it had into the Leonard-George basket. But at a certain point, reality has to trump fantasy.

Leonard suddenly turning up healthy for an entire playoff run, and the Clippers then turning that playoff run into a championship, is a fantasy. Reality is what is happening, and has been happening all along. Leonard is once again in street clothes. The Clippers are clinging to first-round life again. And now they have three more years of this reality to look forward to, at a cool $50M a year. Yikes.

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