Kawhi Leonard or bust? The Clippers Curse strikes again

Kawhi Leonard (white T-shirt) sits with teammates on the Clippers bench on Thursday.

Columnist

April 21, 2023 4:30 AM PT

They played huge, outmanned but not outhustled, overrun but never overwhelmed.

They stayed with the heavily favored Phoenix Suns into the final frenzied moments, clinging to within a couple of baskets in the final few ticks of the clock, hanging around as the crowd roared with desperate hope.

The Clippers Curse hung around longer.

The Suns held off the Clippers 129-124 Thursday at Crypto.com Arena to take a two-games-to-one lead in their first-round playoff series while the game’s dominant force stirred menacingly on the Clippers’ bench because of a sprained right knee.

The Clippers Curse is still undefeated.

This time it wasn’t about a blown series lead or a racist owner or Flop City. This time it wasn’t even acknowledged until hours before tipoff, at which point it stunningly surfaced in the latest Kawhi Leonard injury to wreak havoc on a franchise annually battered with bad news.

Are you kidding me?

One minute, the Clippers were headed buoyantly into this vital Game 3, Leonard playing in another universe, his greatness unmatched, their potential limitless.

The next minute, despite no visible signs of distress, Leonard was declared out with a sprained right knee and the Clippers were cooked.

No word on the severity of the sprain. No timetable for a return. And, make no mistake, despite their valiant effort Thursday — Norman Powell scored 42 points! — they have no chance of winning this series without Leonard’s presence to cover for the earlier loss of sore-kneed Paul George.

The Clippers are 3-10 without Leonard and George in the lineup, not good numbers for a team two losses from playoff extinction.

“I mean, it’s very deflating,” said Clippers coach Tyronn Lue, afterward shaking his head and frowning after his usual wizardry just couldn’t save a team attempting to beat three future Hall of Famers. “Our guys have been through a lot this year … to get the point where we made the playoffs and we feel pretty good outside of having PG out … when this happens … it’s a blow.”

Lue fixed his stare and shrugged.

“But there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “We just have to come out and compete the way we did tonight.”

My, how they competed, outscoring the larger Suns in the paint while taking advantage of Russell Westbrook’s energy — 30 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds — and clutch shooting by the wonderfully named Bones Hyland.

But without Leonard’s defense they were almost helpless against Devin Booker’s 45 points and Kevin Durant’s 28, and without Leonard’s offense they forced their way into 18 turnovers. Leonard is arguably the game’s greatest active postseason player when he’s healthy, and how can the Clippers ever replace that?

“I mean, I just feel sorry for him,” said Westbrook of Leonard. “He probably was playing his best basketball in a while, probably the best in the world honestly. It just sucks for him mentally.”

That’s the Clippers Curse. No load management can fix it. No baseline-cheering billionaire can control it. It taunts and teases and eventually crushes mentally, haunting this team since they arrived in Los Angeles 39 years ago.

The Curse saddled the franchise with the despicable Donald Sterling, with two blown three-games-to-one leads in the playoffs, with an implosion of an impossibly talented group known as Lob City and, finally, with a serious knee injury suffered by Leonard that prevented them from advancing to the NBA Finals in 2021.

This time, yep, same Leonard, same knee, same aarrgh.

Despite a sparkling makeover by uber-rich owner Steve Ballmer that includes plans to move into a new Inglewood arena in 2024, the scars of The Curse grow deeper every season.

They have never won a championship in the 54-year history of the franchise dating to their origins in Buffalo and San Diego. In fact, they’ve never advanced to the NBA Finals.

Four seasons ago, Ballmer boldly declared war on The Curse by signing Leonard and trading for George, and what’s happened since?

In 2020, they blew a 3-1 lead to the Denver Nuggets in a postseason series that would have set them up with a historic showdown with the Lakers.

In 2021, they advanced to their first Western Conference finals before Leonard’s knee injury halted them.

Last year, missing Leonard the entire season, they couldn’t survive the play-in tournament.

This season was going to be different. This season, Leonard and George were going to be healthy and load managed and ready to roll, and even a late-season sprained knee by George wasn’t going to stop them.

When Leonard was brilliant against the Suns in a Game 1 upset victory with 38 points in 42 minutes, Lue couldn’t help but brag.

“This is what we’ve been saving up for,” said Lue, answering critics of the annoying load management.

Leonard was nearly as great in a Game 2 loss, going for 31 points in 39 minutes.

Then two days later, during Thursday morning’s shootaround, seemingly out of nowhere, it was determined he wasn’t healthy enough to play.

“He had it at the end of Game 1. It’s the playoffs, so he wanted to fight through it. Obviously was able to play through Game 2,” explained Lawrence Frank, the Clippers’ president of basketball operations. “Symptoms got worse after Game 2, and we ruled him out.”

So strange. Leonard was never on the Clippers’ injury report. He was never seen limping, even when walking the arena hallways before the game.

The only explanation, of course, is the Clippers Curse, and now one must wonder.

If Leonard doesn’t quickly heal and return to this series and the Clippers are knocked out early again … does management wave the white flag on this Leonard-George tandem and break them up this summer for some more reliable pieces?

If not, does the highly valued Lue stick around to coach through another frazzled season of load management priority and injury uncertainty?

So many potential questions and so few answers on a night when, once again, the last word belonged to the strongest force on the franchise.

Clippers Curse, have you no mercy?