Kawhi Leonard returned to the basketball court for his first NBA game in a really long time, just not quite as long as TNT sideline reporter Stephanie Ready thought.
Thursday night, Leonard helped his Los Angeles Clippers defeat their hallway rival Los Angeles Lakers with 14 points in 21 minutes off the bench. It was the first game action for Leonard since June 2021, after the two-time NBA Finals MVP missed the entirety of last season with an ACL injury. Following the win, Leonard was interviewed courtside on the TNT broadcast.
“Kawhi, this is your first game back since 2013,” Ready said. “You played over 20 minutes, I gotta ask, how do you feel physically?”
Although it often feels like Leonard misses an excessive amount of time, he obviously has been on the court since 2013, in fact he’s played the bulk of his career 577 games since 2013. Leonard definitely picked up on the mistake, but rather than calling Ready out for it, he just smirked and moved on.
Surely, Ready is aware that Thursday night wasn’t Leonard’s first game action in nearly a decade. The veteran sideline reporter likely mixed up the years with 2013 being the last time Leonard came off the bench for a regular season game.
While Leonard decided not to make a big deal of the mistake in the moment, TNT cameras did catch the NBA star attempting to inform Ready of the error after the interview. If you watch around the 1-minute, 45-second mark of the above clip, Leonard appears to be trying to get Ready’s attention, saying, “hey, you said 2013.” Interestingly, it also appears as if Leonard says “nineteen,” although I can’t imagine the Clippers forward forgot that he played NBA games in 2020 and 2021. Either way, it was nice of Leonard to wait until his mic was off before correcting Ready, rather than risk derailing the interview on live TV.
