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The San Antonio Spurs' reported players-only meeting with Kawhi Leonard‘s has a slightly different tone than first suggested by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski‘s original piece.
According to Jabari Young of the San Antonio Express-News, players did not implore Leonard's return, but rather wanted to gauge the extent of his injury and getting a feel if he wanted to return during the regular season or not.
1st off.. ESPN has it wrong. The meeting wasn’t tense. It caught Kawhi off guard, and teammates just wanted to check on his status so they wouldn’t want to hear it from media. He had support from teammates #Spurs https://t.co/xcjKq9vcck
— Jabari Young (@JabariJYoung) March 22, 2018
Leonard was reportedly caught off guard by the meeting, led by seasoned veteran Tony Parker, who suffered a quad injury of his own last season, making a full recovery by the early run of this 2017-18 campaign.
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The 26-year-old star made no guarantees and said he'd return when he feels healthy enough to do so — rendering it a fairly fruitless meeting, which lasted five to 10 minutes.
Earlier in March, coach Gregg Popovich noted Leonard still needed medical clearance from doctors outside of the team before deciding his status, recently doing some 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 workouts with the staff, still not being incorporated with teammates besides the recent team photoshoot.
“Like anybody else, he's frustrated,” Popovich said earlier this month. “He wants to be playing. He's competitive. It's been a tough year in that regard for him. But the first step is he's got to be cleared by his medical staff that he's seeing.
“Until he gets cleared, we can't make a decision on when he's coming back,” Popovich continued. “So, once he gets cleared, then he and I can sit down and talk and see what we think about an appropriate time to come back. But that clearance has to be obtained first.”
Leonard has played in only nine games this season, putting up averages of 16.2 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 2.3 assists through limited minutes — clearly still a shadow of himself due to the lingering quad concerns.
