Kawhi Leonard has by his standards been an iron man this season

For quite some time now, Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard has been seen as fragile, the poster child for “load management” over the past five years. However, this season Leonard has put much of that talk to rest.

Leonard missed his eighth game of the regular season on Thursday as the Clippers defeated the reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets, 102-100. This was Leonard’s second game in a row he has missed due to right knee soreness, but with a little over a week left in the regular season, Leonard having missed so few games is not the norm.

Last season, Leonard appeared in 52 games for the Clippers. The campaign before that he missed all 82 games recovering from an ACL injury. During the shortened 2020-21 campaign, the six-time All-Star suited for just 52-of-72 games.

In contrast to those years, Leonard has almost been an iron man in 2023-24, having played in 68 of the team's 76 games. Even if he doesn’t step on the court again until the playoffs, his being on the court for nearly 83% of the Clippers’ games is a win. On the surface, it looks like any alleged load management is a thing of the past.

Currently, the Clippers sit firmly at 48-28 and in fourth place in the Western Conference. They are one game behind the Oklahoma City Thunder for third place and two games ahead of the Dallas Mavericks, who are in fifth place with six games remaining. Although the Clippers beat the Nuggets Thursday, a title run is only realistic with a healthy Leonard on the floor.