The Walking Wounded: How Injuries Are Already Shaping the NBA Preseason

LOS ANGELES — The games don’t count yet, which makes it the perfect time to talk about the players who aren’t in them. Across the league’s training camps, the injury report is already doing what it always does in October — quietly redrawing rotations, delaying debuts and reminding everyone that the best ability really is availability.

Some of this is normal October business: veterans held out for precaution, young players dinged in camp. Some of it is not normal at all. A franchise-altering trade return with a torn Achilles. A $31 million free-agent signing who might miss opening night. A dynasty-adjacent core in Golden State that can’t get healthy. Here’s where the walking wounded stand, team by team.

Clippers: the Ingram wait

The biggest “when will we see him” in the league belongs to Brandon Ingram. The 29-year-old wing was the marquee player the Clippers received from Toronto in the Kawhi Leonard trade — agreed to June 30, held up more than a month by the league’s salary-cap circumvention investigation, finally executed Sept. 14. But Ingram won’t be making his Clippers debut anytime soon.

At media day on Sept. 28, interim president of basketball operations Trent Redden disclosed that Ingram is dealing with a partially torn left Achilles tendon, revealed during a May surgery to repair a heel issue. The recovery timeline for a partial tear is around six months — shorter than a full rupture, but still putting Ingram’s availability around late October or November, assuming no setbacks. He’ll be reevaluated then.

The context stings. Ingram played 77 regular-season games for Toronto last year, averaging 21.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.7 assists — but the heel kept him from being whole in the playoffs. He played just 11:22 in the Raptors’ Game 5 loss to Cleveland, then missed Games 6 and 7 as the Cavaliers closed the series. Per reporting around the trade, the Clippers knew about the May surgery when they made the deal and learned more about the Achilles afterward. The bet is that a healthy Ingram, eventually, is worth the wait. The Clippers open Oct. 21 at home against Sacramento. They’ll open without him.

Spurs: Harris hurt before the first tip

San Antonio’s summer addition was supposed to be the steady veteran hand on a Finals team. Instead, Tobias Harris might not be ready for opening night. The 34-year-old forward strained his left calf during training camp, sat out Sunday’s intrasquad scrimmage on Oct. 4, and will miss the entire preseason. The Spurs say he’ll be evaluated after the preseason, which leaves his status for the Oct. 20 season opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder squarely in question.

Harris signed a two-year, $31 million deal in July after two seasons in Detroit, where he averaged 13.3 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.5 assists across 63 games and helped the Pistons to the East’s No. 1 seed. The 15-year veteran has been the definition of reliable — which is exactly why the Spurs wanted him next to their young core after last spring’s Finals loss to the Knicks. Calf strains are notoriously easy to aggravate; San Antonio has every incentive to be patient. But an opener against the Thunder without your veteran forward is not how anyone drew it up.

Warriors: the band can’t get back together (yet)

Golden State’s preseason opener Sunday in Hawaii — a 104-101 loss to the Clippers — was played without three expected rotation pieces. Jimmy Butler III and Moses Moody, whose 2025-26 seasons both ended prematurely with injury, remain sidelined. Kristaps Porziņģis wasn’t available either, listed out with an illness.

The absences forced Steve Kerr to go 18 deep, and the kids nearly stole it. Rookie Yaxel Lendeborg opened the scoring with a three, Stephen Curry needed only 13 minutes to drop 10 points on 3-of-4 shooting, and veteran big Charles Bassey flirted with a double-double (12 points, 8 boards). Malevy Leones poured in eight fourth-quarter points to fuel a comeback that briefly gave Golden State the lead inside 30 seconds — before Clippers rookie Keaton Wagler, the top pick out of Illinois, buried the game-winning jumper and finished with 15.

The Warriors’ preseason slate — six games, including two each against the Lakers and Trail Blazers plus Sacramento — is built for exactly this kind of experimentation. The regular-season opener comes Oct. 21 on the road against the Lakers. Whether Butler, Moody and Porziņģis are back by then will say a lot about how seriously to take Golden State as a West factor.

Raptors: slow-playing Kawhi

The strangest sight of the preseason so far might be Kawhi Leonard in a Raptors uniform — again. Seven years after he delivered Toronto its only championship, Leonard is back via the Ingram trade, and the Raptors are treating him like fine china. He sat Saturday’s 129-105 preseason loss to Miami in Quebec City for reconditioning, and head coach Darko Rajakovic has already ruled him out of the Oct. 10 game in Vancouver too.

“Won’t rush the two-time NBA Finals MVP” is the organizational line, and given Leonard’s injury history, it’s the only sane one. The Raptors’ camp has been a MASH unit anyway: first-round pick Allen Graves (groin), Jamison Battle (back) and Kyle Anderson (knee bruise) were all held out of Thursday’s open scrimmage, camp invitees Nate Bittle (foot) and Andre Jackson Jr. (hamstring) joined them, and Alijah Martin (knee) was limited to drill work. The good news: center Jakob Poeltl, whose back limited him to a career-low 46 games last season, was “looking spry,” and third-year guard Jamal Shead just signed a three-year, $24 million extension.

The Clippers’ depth test

Ingram isn’t the Clippers’ only absence. Second-year guard Kobe Sanders is out with a hip impingement, Yanic Konan Niederhauser and Jordan Miller are unavailable, and Bradley Beal — the veteran guard expected to carry real creation load — is day-to-day with a knee issue. That’s five rotation hopefuls out before the preseason even started, on a team that just traded its franchise player and is asking a new core to gel.

Sunday’s win in Hawaii showed the flip side: Darius Garland and Rui Hachimura built a 13-point lead, and Wagler’s late heroics suggest the rookie class can contribute immediately. But preseason depth and April depth are different things. The Clippers’ season will be defined by how many of these names are available when it matters — starting with Ingram’s Achilles.

What it all means

October injuries rarely decide seasons, but they always shape them. The Spurs need Harris’s steadiness from day one in a brutal West. The Clippers need Ingram to be worth a franchise-player trade. The Warriors need their veterans’ bodies to hold one more time. And the Raptors need Kawhi Leonard to be Kawhi Leonard — eventually, carefully, and only when it counts.

The games don’t count yet. The absences already do.

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