Did Clippers not know Kawhi Leonard underwent knee surgery?

The Los Angeles Clippers’ announcement on Tuesday that Kawhi Leonard underwent knee surgery caught many people off-guard. Typically, news leaks out in advance when a player of Leonard’s caliber undergoes surgery. But that didn’t happen here.

Now one TV personality is even saying that the Clippers were unaware of the surgery until Tuesday.

FS1’s Skip Bayless, who abandoned actual reporting in favor of extreme opinions on TV several years ago, dropped a bomb on his “Undisputed” show Wednesday. Bayless claimed that the Clippers were kept in the dark regarding Leonard’s injury and surgery.

“He had the surgery, and the Clippers weren’t even aware he was going to have the surgery until Kawhi and company called them yesterday and said, ‘We need to go ahead and release that we had surgery,” Bayless claimed.

Bayless has not been a traditional source for reporting for several years, but his claim would not be unique.

Leonard is famously private and keeps a small, close team of people around him. One of the biggest reasons for his split with the San Antonio Spurs had to do with the team being kept in the dark about Leonard’s quad injury.

The Clippers’ press release about Leonard said the forward would be out indefinitely after undergoing surgery for a partially torn ACL. Some injury experts gave opinions on how long he might be out.

H/T The Big Lead