Predicting the earliest possible Kawhi Leonard return game after grim update

The start of the LA Clippers' season is filled with excitement for a multitude of reasons. It will be the first time in the franchise's history that the team has owned their own home arena, without having to share it with any other teams. On top of that, the Intuit Dome experience is shaping up to be one of the best and most unique in all of professional sports.

On top of that, the Clippers boast an almost entirely new roster following the departure of Paul George and Russell Westbrook. But the caveat here is that now, the team has to rely solely on James Harden and Kawhi Leonard as its franchise cornerstones. The latter of which is still battling injury troubles, and is set to miss the start of this exciting new season.

On Wednesday afternoon, Shams Charania appeared on ESPN's set ahead of the Clippers' home opener and shared an update on Kawhi's status. While Shams reiterated many of the same talking points we have already heard up to this point regarding Leonard's health, he did share one new detail.

"I'm told Kawhi Leonard will be missing weeks," he said. "This is not an injury that's going to be measured by a week, two weeks potentially. Not days, obviously. This will be an extended period of time that the Clippers are starting this season without him."

Shams: Kawhi to miss "weeks"

Shams also reiterated the situation regarding the Clippers' plan to keep Kawhi on the floor once he does return, saying that they continue to have this plan in place to mitigate his injuries going forward. As for the exact date Leonard will return, we do not know, but we can take an educated guess given the information currently available to us.

According to Shams' report, Kawhi is dealing with something that will keep him out for "weeks," so we can assume that two weeks out of the lineup would be the bare minimum. Two weeks from Wednesday, October 23 would be Wednesday, November 6, when the Clippers play host to the Philadelphia 76ers. But for the sake of being realistic, let's assume he remains out beyond that.

After the Clippers play consecutive road games at the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, November 13 and Friday, November 15, they will return to Intuit Dome for a four-game homestand against the Jazz, Warriors, Magic and Kings. It is reasonable to assume that he could be back at the beginning of this stretch of home contests.

If Leonard were back in time for the Utah matchup on November 17, that would mean that he would be active for all but one of LA's NBA Cup games. A mid-November return seems within the realm of possibility, and it would be a soon enough date that the Clippers would have plenty of time to catch up in the standings, should they fall behind in the mean time.