Well Shit: With The Clippers Already Without Paul George, Now Kawhi Leonard Is Missing Game 3 With A Sprained Knee

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Well shit. 

Let's begin by saying once I saw that initial tweet on my timeline, it was hard to know if it was legit. We're back to the Wild Wild West days since Elon decided to take away everyone's blue check unless you're someone who decided to pay for a free app. Given how big of a game it is tonight, who knows what to believe when this type of news comes out. It could be real, or it could be a Suns fan just having some fun. But once the Woj & Co chimed in, we knew it was legit and frankly, it sucks.

I guess the good news is that with both of the late games starting at basically the same time tonight (good job Adam Silver!), at least we can all shift our collective focus to SAC/GS. Maybe check in on this game during a commercial or something becuase unless you're a Clippers or Suns fan I can't imagine it's worth your time. 

Part of why this news stinks so much is because Kawhi was looking like his old playoff self. You know, the kind of player who can put a team on his back and carry them to a title

I'm talking 34.5/6.5/6.0 on 54/60% splits with 3.0 3PM a night while playing 40 minutes. Those are massive numbers that we, unfortunately, haven't been able to see in forever since Kawhi has always been hurt. To know that he also has been doing this with a sprained knee is pretty nuts.

It also surprises a total of zero people that the Clippers are once again dealing with health issues with their two franchise guys at the most important part of the year. This has been the story ever since these guys teamed up in LA, and depending on how much time Kawhi misses who knows if we even get to see them in Round 2. They say day to day, but when has that ever been the deal when it comes to a Kawhi injury timeline? Day to day may as well be month to month. Do you risk bringing him back early and potentially making things worse? 

Things were hard enough for the Clippers when it came to containing the Suns elite scorers who you know as Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, and that was WITH Kawhi. If you remove him from the equation, what the hell are the Clippers supposed to do? Pray that Erin Gordon, Terance Mann, Norm Powell, and Nic Batum can be enough? Maybe they dust off the corpse of Robert Convington and hope for the best? As a Clippers fan, I'm not loving any of those options when you're talking about two of the most devastating scorers the NBA has.

I'm hoping this is more of a Giannis situation where the Clippers did what they had to do by winning on the road, and now they're hoping they can steal a game at home without Kawhi. If this was a Game 7 I wonder if he'd be playing, but since there's still a lot of basketball left in this series they're deciding to go the rest route and hope for the best. The bad news is they don't have a 2 day break between games until after Game 4, and not only that, but the game on Saturday is a 12:30pm local start.

It just sucks that in a series that looked like it was going to be a slugfest for 7 games, things take a big time hit if Kawhi is going to now be missing games as well. The Suns may not have the depth the Clippers do, but what makes LAC so good is the combination of that depth AND the whole Kawhi is the Basketball Terminator thing. Take away the stars, and the Suns lack of depth doesn't really matter as much. 

As always, injuries are simply the worst. Especially ones that happen in the playoffs. Just turn that shit off and let us have the best of the best on the floor for 2 months. Please.