The Leonard Tax Is Already on the Books — Harden Paid It Last April

The conversation around the Clippers' offseason keeps circling back to what they gained: Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two unprotected first-rounders. That's the optimist's ledger. The pessimist's ledger has one line item, and it showed up in the box scores before Kawhi Leonard ever boarded a plane to Toronto.

In the final ten games of last season, Harden took nearly three more shots per game than he had been taking — 19.4 attempts against a prior 16.7. The result wasn't more points. His field-goal percentage cratered from 43.7% to 36.1%. More shots, worse outcomes, a team that went 5-5 in that stretch and finished the year with a negative scoring differential in those games. That's not a slump. That's a preview. The Clippers were asking Harden to carry more of the offensive weight even with Leonard still on the roster, and the seams showed immediately.

This is the number the offseason optimism keeps stepping around. Leonard averaged 27.3 points on 50.4% shooting across 69 games — elite efficiency at elite volume, the kind of scoring that creates breathing room for everyone around him. When that production disappears from the lineup, it doesn't evaporate cleanly. It redistributes. And the redistribution, when it happened in miniature last April, broke Harden's efficiency in a way that should concern anyone projecting next year's offense.

I wrote last week that the Clippers are betting on a version of Harden that the numbers say doesn't exist at high volume. This is the evidence for that argument. Ivica Zubac is a reliable finisher — 13.9 points on 61.5% shooting — but he needs the ball delivered to him; he doesn't generate his own looks. John Collins converts at 55.5%, same story. Derrick Jones Jr. is a cutter and a finisher. The entire supporting cast is built to benefit from creation, not to provide it. That means the creation burden falls almost entirely on Harden, and Harden at high volume is a measurably different player than Harden in a balanced system.

The Ingram addition was supposed to address exactly this — a secondary creator who can make his own shot and take some of the weight off. My read is that Ingram, if the trade clears the NBA's investigation, genuinely changes the calculus. But the Leonard trade remains on hold, which means nothing about the roster is settled, and the Clippers are building contingency plans on top of contingency plans. What isn't contingent is what already happened: the final ten games of 2025-26 were a stress test, and the offense failed it. That's not narrative. That's the box score.