Kawhi Leonard, left, and Danny Green both dealt with injuries last season while with the Spurs. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Kawhi Leonard’s mysterious thigh injury was enough to keep him keep him shelved for almost all of last season, as he engaged in an increasingly acrimonious standoff with the Spurs that resulted in his trade last week to the Raptors. However, Leonard has apparently recovered enough to have passed his physical in Toronto, while Danny Green, who went with Leonard in the trade, is providing some support for his teammate’s skepticism toward San Antonio’s medical staff.
On his new podcast, Green said that his own groin injury was mishandled by the Spurs. He claimed that after an initial diagnosis of a “slight strain” and a course of rehabilitation that kept him out for a few games, he continued to experience discomfort but team doctors did not send him to a specialist or perform another examination until the end of the season, when it was revealed that the strain had worsened into a groin tear.
“I would feel it and they were like, my agent, ‘Maybe you should get a second opinion.’ I didn’t want to, because I have full faith and believe in the Spurs staff,” Green said. “They’ve always been great to me, they’ve always done right by me, they’ve always done a hell of a job. So throughout the season, we’ve monitored it, but we never went back to check on it again, because so many other injuries have happened.
“I could have got a second opinion, so I see where Kawhi is coming from when he’s got his second opinion. Because a lot of times, you’ll get information from outside sources that, not saying that Spurs staff is not up to par, it’s just not that everybody’s a specialist in every area.”
Leonard’s injury was initially announced by the Spurs in September as a case of right quadriceps tendinopathy that would keep him out for preseason games. Coach Gregg Popovich then offered vague descriptions of his star player’s condition as Leonard missed the season opener and many more games after that, not returning to the court until Dec. 12, 28 games into the season.
Leonard appeared in only nine contests until San Antonio shelved him in January for “an indefinite period of time,” which turned out to be the rest of the season. Reports began emerging of “discord” between the two-time NBA defensive player of the year and the Spurs, and while Popovich scoffed at talk of a rare “soap opera” involving his normally drama-free squad, it wasn’t long before NBA insiders were claiming that some of Leonard’s teammates were expressing frustration with him and imploring him to return to the lineup.
That never happened, with Leonard declining to even show up for the Spurs’ playoff games while using New York as a base for his medical treatments and recovery efforts. When Spurs officials came to New York to check on him, he reportedly hid from them, reflecting the bizarrely extreme state of his estrangement from the team.
Leonard is no longer on the team, having been dealt with Green to the Raptors in exchange for DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a 2019 protected first-round draft pick. His passed physical, reported Tuesday by ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, means that the trade is official, and Leonard’s health is no longer the Spurs’ problem.
“They did everything they could, but I think it would have been nice to see a specialist, just to see if there was another angle, another view,” Green said of the Spurs’ training staff. “Just because Kawhi got a second opinion, you can’t knock him for that.”
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