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Clippers All-Star Kawhi Leonard took part in the “contact” portion of practice for the first time this season on Wednesday, but coach Tyronn Lue said there is no timetable yet for the return of the team’s best player, who has missed the entire season he sustained an injury to his right knee.
Leonard will travel with the Clippers to games in Dallas (Thursday and Saturday) and Memphis (Monday), but he will not play in either of those games, Lue said. The Clippers then return home to play Golden State at the Intuit Dome on December 27th.
“Well, he practiced five-on-five with contact today,” Lue said Wednesday. “So good to see him out there doing it. It came out fine. So just continue with the process and make sure we check every box before returning to play. … He will travel, yes, but he will not play on this trip.”
Lue said the Clippers had days off to practice during the trip. Leonard could participate in these practices and will perform rehabilitation work alongside the team’s medical staff.
Read more: The Clippers are ‘checking the boxes’ with Kawhis Leonard’s rehab, but when will he return?
It will be Leonard’s first regular-season trip, his last since traveling with the team to Hawaii for training camp in late September.
“Exactly the same thing, just making progress,” Lue said of what the Clippers want to see from Leonard down the road. “Just keep checking the boxes and making sure that when he’s done with five-on-five play and contact, he doesn’t have any swelling and that he doesn’t have any setbacks. And he can do a lot of rehab and other things on the go with our team. That’s why he’s making the trip.”
Leonard has intensified his practices in recent weeks.
He last played in a game for the Clippers on April 26 in Game 4 of a first-round playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks.
Read more: James Harden scores 41 points as the Clippers outscore the Jazz despite optimism over Kawhi Leonard
“I can imagine he’s getting more and more excited,” Lue said. “He put in a lot of work to get to this point. So it was a big step for him to do a five-on-five fight with contact today. Like I said, we have to keep doing what we’re doing. The medical staff was great. He’s great at doing work. Now we just have to keep building on it.”
Leonard was believed to be 100% ready to participate in workouts, but the Clippers are still cautious.
“Yeah, he feels good,” Lue said. “We just need to make sure he continues to be OK. We don’t want something where it takes a day or two and then it’s back to where it was. That’s why we’re taking the process slowly. That’s why we do it right. He feels good. So we just have to make sure he can do it long enough to check all those boxes, make sure the process is right and not just throw him back on the floor.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
