The strangest still-ongoing subplot to the NBA season are the various goings on with Kawhi Leonard. Last year, Leonard was an MVP candidate with the San Antonio Spurs, who made a run into the Western Conference Finals before an injury cast him, and soon the Spurs, into the offseason.
A separate Leonard injury from the one he suffered against the Warriors in the postseason has lingered all year, though, and he’s played just nine games. As Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has very carefully said, he’s not sure what’s still wrong with Leonard and doesn’t know what his representatives feel about his health.
As Leonard has been sidelined, speculation is sort of running wild at this point. There were even rumors that there was a “tense” players only meeting where the Spurs tried to convince Leonard to come back, although Danny Green made it a point to quash those rumors.
Green appeared on Chris Broussard’s In The Zone podcast and was asked about whether there’s any bad blood brewing in San Antonio. He made it clear that everyone is still on good terms, and that no one on the team is at odds with the Spurs star.
“I can say from our team and from their perspective and standpoint, I can speak for most of them, there is no odds,” Green said. “We’re not at odds with him. I don’t know about the front office, I don’t know about family issues or whatever that is. I would like to guess none because he’s in the facility, he’s at the arena, he’s still there, they communicate, they still talk and check up on him, he still works out with our training staff. But from the team’s perspective, there’s nobody on our team that’s at odds with him. We understand, we have his back regardless of what he’s been going through.”
Both Green and Leonard are saying all the right things, which means until someone actually lets us know what is going on here, all anyone can do is speculate. Still, it sounds like when it comes to Leonard and his teammates, there aren’t any major issues.
