The crazy privileges of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George

It’s no secret that the Los Angeles Clippers failed to create sufficient chemistry and suffered a nasty fiasco in the playoffs last season. We have mentioned here and there the dissatisfaction of certain players and the impression that Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, whose speech attempts to re-mobilize the group have failed, have not been the best leaders there is.

The Athletic today unveils exactly the advantages and privileges enjoyed by the two Clippers superstars. The very ones who apparently prevented their teammates from giving themselves body and soul for the team …

According to journalist Juvan Buha here is what the famous preferential treatment at the origin of the discontent looked like:

Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were the only two players on the squad entitled to their own security staff and personal coaches.

Leonard and George had control over the team’s training and travel planning. Several Clippers players are convinced that Kawhi Leonard has canceled several training sessions by his will alone.

Kawhi, still him, was granted the right to live in San Diego and therefore be late for most of the training sessions, but also to depart by plane for away meetings.

The two All-Stars were also given the opportunity to receive immediate post-match treatment, sparing them for at least 45 minutes of appearances in front of the media. Suddenly, their teammates often had to do the job and were thus identified as “voice” of the Clippers, creating a feeling of unease in some media.

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Finally, and these are again convictions on the part of their teammates, without this being confirmed by the team, many believe that Kawhi Leonard and Paul George had the option of choosing when they would play. That is to say that they were able to decide to miss matches in their entirety, but also to choose when they wanted to enter or play or not depending on the course of the matches.

What transpires from this article is that if the Clippers were willing to accept privileges for Kawhi Leonard – even with a bit of a bite – so long as he had proven in the past that he was a superstar in this league, he The same was not true of Paul George. Patrick Beverley, Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell, now a member of the Lakers, would have particularly struggled to understand the change of atmosphere in the locker room and their demotion in the leadership hierarchy after their superb 2018-2019 season.

Even more surprising than this absence of hooks between old and new, the name of the locker room leader in this Clippers team: Marcus Morris. Arriving in February just before the trading deadline, the one who recently signed a 4-year contract with the Clippers apparently immediately became a vocal boss and the player who tried to pull everyone’s braces up when things were wrong. Some, like Ivica Zubac, did not like it at all and frequently took the beak with him …

We have nothing against Marcus Morris, but it is quite symptomatic that a player just arrived is also quickly identified as the guarantor of the good behavior of the locker room. Especially a locker room in which there is a monster like Kawhi Leonard and a star like Paul George …

In light of these revelations, we will obviously be monitoring the Los Angeles Clippers closely in the coming months. Recall, for all practical purposes, that Kawhi Leonard and Paul George can both leave the team at the end of the season …

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