LA Clippers: Did the shortened offseason hurt the Clips?
By Evan Desai
Wednesday will be a day that not only LA Clippers fans, but all basketball fans will remember for a long time.
Kawhi Leonard was ruled out indefinitely after the Clippers are concerned that he injured his right ACL, and former Clipper Chris Paul tested positive for COVID-19, leaving him potentially out for some time.
Injuries have been piling up in this NBA postseason, and this season in general. Many are speculating whether it’s because of the quick offseason that happened between last year and this year.
Were the LA Clippers one of the teams affected most by the short offseason?
The LA Clippers have been absolutely decimated by injuries this year, and the shortened offseason may explain why.
LeBron James was so irate about the injuries that have taken place, that he took to Twitter to rip the league for starting so early (click for full thread).
They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season. I knew exactly what would happen. I only wanted to protect the well being of the players which ultimately is the PRODUCT & BENEFIT of OUR GAME! These injuries isn’t just “PART OF THE GAME”. It’s the lack of PURE
— LeBron James (@KingJames) June 16, 2021
The last game of the NBA Finals was October 11th, 2020. The first day of this season was December 22nd, 2021. That’s obviously an incredibly short offseason.
Hopefully the NBA has learned its lesson about having such a short offseason and then a jam-packed schedule.
— Adam Fromal (@fromal09) June 16, 2021
Unfortunately, that lesson is probably that the league is still making a lot of money and garnering a ton of attention.
The Clippers very well may have been affected very much by this. They had a slew of injuries following them around all year, and are now missing Serge Ibaka for the rest of the season and maybe Leonard as well.
This season, Kawhi missed 20 regular season games, Paul George missed 18, Patrick Beverley missed 35, Marcus Morris missed 15, and Ibaka missed 31. That many key players missing that mnay games is very abnormal.
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The offseason very well could have played a role in the insanely high amount of injured players this year, and that injury bug didn’t skip our Clippers.