Report: Clippers star Leonard out, likely to miss Warriors' home opener originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Los Angeles Clippers will be without Kawhi Leonard, their best player, when they open their new arena next week and could be without him for the foreseeable future.

Leonard will be sidelined indefinitely at the start of the 2024-25 NBA season as he continues to recover from inflammation in his right knee, ESPN's Shams Charania and Ohm Youngmisuk reported Thursday, citing league sources.

The Clippers will open the season by hosting the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday in their new home, the Intuit Dome, in the first game of the regular season. From there, they visit the Denver Nuggets on October 26th and face the Golden State Warriors in their home game on October 27th.

The two-time NBA Finals MVP has a lengthy injury history, including a torn ACL that sidelined him for the entire 2021-22 season and a torn meniscus he suffered in the 2023 first round.

Leonard is coming off an All-Star season in which he played 68 regular season games, his most since the 2016-17 season. Still, the threat of injury was back during the most important part of the Clippers' season last spring.

He first struggled with knee inflammation in a win over the Charlotte Hornets on March 31, and the illness persisted into the playoffs. He missed the final eight games of the regular season and four games of the Clippers' first-round series against the Dallas Mavericks, which the Mavericks subsequently won in six games.

Leonard was also named to Team USA this summer, but was replaced by Boston Celtics guard Derrick White on the Olympic squad that later won gold in Paris. USA Basketball said at the time that Leonard “respects that USA Basketball and the Clippers have decided that it is in his best interest to spend the remainder of the summer preparing for the upcoming season rather than attending the Olympics.” Paris.”

The 33-year-old forward did not play for the Clippers this preseason and did not participate in any on-court contact activities during training camp.