PLAYA VISTA, Calif. — After an entire training camp and preseason without any restrictions or setbacks, Kawhi Leonard said he’s feeling as good as he has since tearing his right ACL over two years ago.
Leonard is fully recovered from his torn ACL, having had surgery on it July 13, 2021, and a cleanup procedure June 6 to repair a torn meniscus suffered in the same knee during last season’s first round against Phoenix.
“I feel good and I’m ready to go,” Leonard said before Clippers practice Tuesday. “I think last year came off of ACL, so pretty much it’s like a two-year process. Talking to guys [who suffered ACL injuries] and seeing when they do start feeling good or just trusting your knee, it’s just something that you feel and I mean one day just turns around for you. So it wasn’t really nothing too different.”
Asked whether he had crossed that day when it turned around for him, Leonard confirmed that he is past it.
“Yeah, I’m saying I feel good,” he said.
The Clippers, though, will still go into Wednesday’s home opener against Portland short-handed. Newly named starter Terance Mann sprained his left ankle during Monday’s practice and has been ruled out against the Blazers. Ty Lue said Mann will be considered day-to-day. Backup point guard Bones Hyland, who sprained his left ankle during a preseason game last week, practiced Tuesday, and Lue said the team will see how Hyland feels before determining his status for the opener.
At least Lue will have Leonard in a season opener without any restrictions for the first time during his tenure as Clippers coach. In Lue’s previous three seasons as their head coach, Leonard was limited or injured for the opener.
Leonard missed all of the 2021-22 season before starting last season under careful restrictions. He experienced stiffness in his surgically repaired knee, which cost him 12 games. He later suffered a sprained right ankle that cost him six more games early in the season.
But Leonard ramped his way back to a dominant first two playoff games against Phoenix, averaging 34.5 points, 6.0 assists and 6.5 rebounds before missing the remainder of the series with the meniscus injury.
“It wasn’t about just performance and putting up numbers,” Leonard said of how he gauged his comeback from the ACL injury. “It’s about how your overall body’s feeling at the time, and I felt like I was still trying to get through some humps and just get healthy. But I was able to show fans or other players in the league and myself that I was able to play at a high level.
“On-court stuff, you’re going to have ups and downs. If you’re rating a game off of missed shots or minutes played, it is tough to try to measure yourself to being a great player. But at that point [last regular season] I was just trying to get healthy, just trying to move, and I knew numbers would come. I wasn’t really focused on that at the time. Trying to win games, that’s what I’m focused on.”
Lue can finally coach an opener with a fully unleashed Leonard.
“That’s how I feel,” Lue said. “It’s different when you have restrictions. You can’t play live the whole time. You can’t go through all the execution plays you want to go through, and so it’s a big difference. And so like I said, with him and [Paul George] and [Russell Westbrook] coming in this year, just setting the tone early in training camp, all the conditioning, with all the running we did, like, no complaining and we just did it. And so that was our mindset coming into it.
“We want to get out to a good start this season. We don’t want to ease into the season.”
This story originally appeared on ESPN
