The 2024-25 NBA season is here! We’re breaking down the biggest questions, best- and worst-case scenarios, and fantasy outlooks for all 30 teams. Enjoy!
Additions: Derrick Jones Jr., Nicolas Batum, Kris Dunn, Kevin Porter Jr., Mo Bamba, Cameron Christie
Subtractions: Paul George, Russell Westbrook, Mason Plumlee, Daniel Theis, Brandon Boston Jr.
Kawhi Leonard has not finished a playoff run with the Los Angeles Clippers since 2020, his first season with the team, when he was a 28-year-old freshly removed from a second NBA Finals MVP performance.
Looking back, it is remarkable how well the Toronto Raptors managed his injury on their 2019 title run. He joined them with what the San Antonio Spurs termed “right quadriceps tendinopathy” — a condition that cost him all but nine games of the 2017-18 season. He tore his right ACL in the 2021 playoffs, missed the entire 2021-22 campaign and could not keep the knee healthy for either of the last two postseasons.
We cannot overstate how much Leonard’s chronic knee issues have impacted his career. It has been eight years of this. When healthy, Leonard is one of the best two-way wings the game has ever seen. It is as if he has been programmed to dominate on both ends of the floor, complete with the personality to match. He beat LeBron James’ Miami Heat and Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors on his way to two rings.
Except, the program keeps malfunctioning. Even now, Leonard is not healthy. Inflammation in his surgically repaired right knee cost him his roster spot at the Paris Olympics. The Clippers will manage the soreness in his knee throughout training camp, hoping he can start the season on opening night.
“Making sure we’re staying healthy for those important moments,” Leonard told reporters on media day.
“Important moments” may never come if Leonard cannot carry the Clippers. Paul George is no longer a safety net. He left his hometown team for the chance to compete for a championship on the Philadelphia 76ers. Anyone could interpret that as a vote of no confidence in the Clippers’ own ability to contend.
The Clippers do feature one-time MVP James Harden on a fresh two-year, $70 million contract. He is 35 years old, has not made an All-Star team in either of the past two seasons and does not seem to think he is any different as a player, despite playing for a fourth team in four years. For anyone hoping he might cede control of the offense, Harden told reporters on media day, per The Washington Post’s Ben Golliver, “It’s definitely going to involve a lot of me. There was talk when I was in Houston … ‘You can’t win like that.’ You just saw a guy [Luka Dončić] last season make the Finals playing the same exact way I played.”
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Played. As in past tense. It has been six years since Harden’s heliocentric brand of basketball carried a contender. Only the Clippers seem to agree that this is still a winning strategy. They replaced George with a cast of complementary characters — Derrick Jones Jr., Nicolas Batum and Kris Dunn among them — whose contributions to a championship-caliber team are entirely reliant on their team’s two headliners.
How good are the Clippers with Leonard and Harden at the top of the bill? With George, too, last season they looked formidable for about six weeks — until the wheels fell off again after the All-Star break. That was the time to blow this experiment to smithereens. But the Clippers are opening a new arena, and they did not want to strip the roster down to the studs, so they gave us this patchwork pretender instead.
The Clippers nurse Leonard through a relatively healthy season. Harden turns back the clock, operating as an offensive hub, catering to Leonard or carrying the load in his absence. Role players fall in line behind them. Ivica Zubac emerges fully, protecting the rim on one end and finishing around it on the other. Head coach Tyronn Lue extracts what he normally does from a roster — more than the sum of its parts — and the Clippers enter the playoffs a frisky first-round opponent (with a second-round ceiling).
Leonard’s chronic knee pain never relents. Harden tries to do too much, and that takes its toll on his aging hamstrings. They lose the rest of the roster, and even Lue cannot convince them there is anything left to play for. The Intuit Dome is empty. They are bound for the lottery, where the Oklahoma City Thunder hold the rights to their draft pick. And they are staring at the prospects of paying another $86 million to Leonard and Harden for the 2025-26 campaign, when OKC also holds the right to their pick.
Zubac is the sleeper I love on this squad. He’s an underrated big man who’s built a strong rapport with Harden. Zubac had the third-most assists from Harden last year despite his scoring numbers dwindling to his lowest numbers since 2011-12 and a majority of those dimes came from passes near the rim and from 4-to-14 feet, which speaks to Zu’s efficiency. The Clippers’ frontcourt depth is limited, so he could be one of the better centers available after the ninth round.
Leonard’s knee is already a concern that must be managed. Leonard has first-round upside when healthy(ish), but the injury concerns made me drop him to the fourth round in my rankings. — Dan Titus
The latest on Leonard prompted oddsmakers to remove future odds for the Clippers. For good reason.
