Kendrick Perkins has finally broken his silence after weathering the storm of criticism that hit following his controversial opinion on Kawhi Leonard’s future.
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The 2008 NBA champion had suggested that the LA Clippers star should consider retirement. Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green was one of the many who called out Perkins for his insensitive comment.
On The Draymond Green Show, Green, along with two-time All-Star Baron Davis, sarcastically attacked Perkins saying, “Because Perk, in his last three years in the NBA, nobody was pushing him into retirement, and everybody probably should have.”
Perkins justified that his opinion was not made with any malicious intent, and cleared the air talking on the All the Smoke podcast:
“Here’s the thing. If you watched the entire segment of me talking about Kawhi, it didn’t come from a place of me being malicious. It came from a place of me being concerned.”
Perkins justified his comments about Kawhi’s retirement not because the Clippers star was not good enough but because he was concerned for the 33-year-old. He talked about the severity of Leonard’s injury and how hard it is to recover from it.
At the same time, Perkins did not criticize Green for his attack and stated that Davis was the one who fuelled the reaction.
The ESPN analyst did have a point while talking about Leonard, who has struggled to stay on the court since joining the Clippers in 2019. Out of a potential 410 games in five seasons, Leonard has played just 229, a mere 56%. Right now, he’s out indefinitely with a knee injury.
Leonard missed four of the six games of the Clippers’ first-round series against the Dallas Mavericks in the last postseason. In the offseason, he attempted to represent Team USA in the Paris Olympics but was forced to give up. He focused on rehabilitating his knee and remains sidelined even now.
The reality behind Leonard’s injury
The details of Kawhi’s injury are not well known, beyond how it has been described: an inflammation in his right knee. Rumors are circulating that the injury is bone-on-bone. Perkins cited this possibility as a big reason for his worry about the health of the star forward.
Perkins has seen first-hand multiple people in the NBA forced to retire due to severe injuries such as Kawhi’s. “How many guys, former teammates or players we know that had to retire because of bone-on-bone?”
Recently Chicago Bulls point guard Lonzo Ball suffered bone-on-bone rubbing due to the lack of meniscus or cartilage in his knee. His left knee is surgically repaired, and he has been sidelined for two full seasons.
Leonard is 33 years old now. And, if his timeline of recovery is similar to Lonzo’s, it raises concerns whether it’s worth it to return. It is still possible that Leonard can come back to an All-Star level performance. But it is also true that injuries have robbed basketball of one of the best players in the world at the peak of his prowess.
