LOS ANGELES – The first six months of the Toronto Raptors' time with Kawhi Leonard has been a work in progress, but the work isn't done yet, says head coach Nick Nurse.

Ahead of the highly-anticipated matchup against the L.A. Clippers, coach Nurse revealed that Leonard would be unable to play in the Tuesday night game due to a bruised right hip.

“Kawhi is not playing tonight,” said Nurse in his pre-game press conference. “He hurt his hip towards the end of the last game. Did go through shootaround, we were hoping he was gonna pass the test and go, but he's still too sore and we're going to hold him out.”

Leonard and the Raptors are also scheduled to take on the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night, the second half of a back-to-back set. Coach Nurse says that his status for that game is still in question as well.

“Yeah, it's up in the air still. If his hip's good, he'll go. Nothing other than trying to get his hip ready right now but he's just dinged a little bit.”

The good news for the Raptors and their fans is that they've gotten off to a 21-7 start to their season with Kawhi Leonard sitting out at least one end of a back-to-back set. According to Nurse, that could be coming to an end very soon as the Raptors had initially targeted this set as the one where Leonard could potentially play both ends.

“Well, he's certainly playing a little bit better, and I think his health is, we're almost to the point where it's a separate little ding that every player is gonna have come and go throughout the season,” added Nurse. From his historical health standpoint, I think we're almost done with that. Not quite, but we're almost there where we're just playing him. We've ramped up the minutes, he's playing a lot more, there's no restrictions per quarter or per stint or per game anymore.

“We were kind of targeting this back-to-back as a possible that he would play both so we're getting closer on that. There's still a lot to learn as far as just chemistry and us jiving with him and him learning our guys and us figuring out exactly how we're doing some things but it looks pretty good to me. And his defense is pretty good, too.”

Nurse and the Raptors are hopeful Leonard will heal up quickly from this bruised hip, but they won't rush him back. Once is his 100 percent, the Raptors are only going to continue to get better.

In his first season with the Raptors, Leonard is averaging career highs with 26.1 points and 8.3 rebounds to go along with 3.0 assists, 1.9 assists, and 1.8 three-pointers per game on 48.8 percent shooting from the field and 38.1 percent from beyond the arc.