Follow The Sporting News on WhatsApp<\/a><\/p>\nThe 34-year-old six-time All-Star has been riddled with injuries lately. Still, individuals should commend the San Diego State product for fighting his way back onto the hardwood this past season.<\/p>\n
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After rehabbing a knee injury and missing the first 34 games of the 2024-25 campaign, Leonard returned to the Clippers\u2019 lineup on Jan. 4 against the Atlanta Hawks.<\/p>\n
With Leonard, a simplistic pull-up jump shot heavy offensive threat who utilizes his physical gifts to serve as a defensive disruptor, the Clippers earned the No. 5 seed in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
Although the Denver Nuggets sent Los Angeles home in the first round, Leonard returned to his dominant playoff ways following a disappointing 2024 postseason showing.<\/p>\n
The two-time NBA champion averaged 25 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.7 assists, and 1.1 steals per game, shooting 53.7% from the field and 40.5% from three-point land.<\/p>\n
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Considering rumors are suggesting James and the Lakers could go their separate ways this summer, trading for Leonard would be an underrated option for the organization.<\/p>\n
With Leonard having slightly more juice left in the tank than James, Los Angeles could experiment with a Leonard-Luka Doncic pairing for several seasons.<\/p>\n
Simmons\u2019 trade idea will get the public talking, at the least.<\/p>\n
More NBA:\u00a0Lakers may cut ties with first-round pick after mediocre rookie season<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers appear to still be in attack mode despite completing two beneficial deals in free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[208,7,2161,559,187,509,4034,192,4032,516,251,135,150,4033,4031,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-145438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-bill-simmons","11":"tag-clippers","12":"tag-denver-nuggets","13":"tag-doncic","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-clippers","16":"tag-laclippers","17":"tag-lebron","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","20":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-losangelesclippers","23":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114792126114902537","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}