Chris Snan, Staff Columnist~
In recent news, Kawhi Leonard is planning to return back to playing basketball in San Antonio sometime in March, after missing quite some time with the team. Leonard was originally sidelined due to injury in late September last year, which kept him out of play until mid-December. This is where things begin to get interesting with the All-Star forward.
Leonard has been dealing with an ongoing right-quad injury, and the rehab has been taking much longer than originally anticipated. In December, when Leonard attempted to return to the normal swing of things, he only played in games that were spaced. This means that Kawhi didn’t participate in back-to-back games, or in games that were two days after one he did play in. Basically, Kawhi was very restricted, playing only one or possibly two games a week. In this span Leonard saw playing time in nine games, and he looked pretty good during that timeline.
However, on Jan. 17, Coach Gregg Popovich and the Spurs medical team ruled Leonard out indefinitely for the same right-quad injury that’s been holding him back the entire season. Amidst this ruling, Leonard took personal time to seek more evaluation on his injury outside of the team’s medical staff. When Leonard decided to take this initiative, he didn’t inform his teammates, nor the coach, of his intentions. Rather, he kept them in the dark, and the Spurs had literally no idea of where their All-Star player was.
After more evaluations and rehab, Kawhi announced this week that he will return to the Spurs practice facility to resume practice with the team. This being said, there’s now a little bit of hope that Kawhi could potentially return to the court in a Spurs jersey sooner rather than later. Though he is still dealing with the injury, and there is no set timeline as to when he will return to normal play, this could be some exciting news for fans of Kawhi and the San Antonio Spurs, who are hoping to see the All-Star make a full recovery.