Clippers' Brandon Ingram Will Miss Start of Season With Partially Torn Achilles

Doctors found the partial Achilles tear during Ingram's heel surgery in May, and the Clippers set no timetable for his return.

Brandon Ingram, the two-time All-Star the Clippers just traded for, won't be ready when the season starts, the team's top basketball executive said Monday.

He's recovering from surgery on his right heel and a partially torn Achilles tendon. For a team that moved Kawhi Leonard this month, that's a hard way to open a new era. Ingram was the headliner coming back in the deal with Toronto, and he's the one who can't play yet.

Trent Redden, the Clippers' interim president of basketball operations, laid it out at the team's media day on September 28, 2026. ESPN's Ben Golliver first reported Redden's comments.

The Achilles part is new. Ingram went in for heel surgery in May, Redden said, and doctors found the partial tear during that operation and repaired it as well. An ESPN report on Sept. 23 had described an offseason foot and heel surgery, with no Achilles in it.

Redden said the Clippers didn't get a clear picture until Ingram arrived and the team's own staff could watch him work:

"It wasn't until we got our hands on [Ingram] here that we started to see where he was at with his progression. He won't be ready for the start of the season, and we'll reevaluate when we get there."

There's no timetable.

Redden did offer one frame, per ESPN: recovering from a partial Achilles tear usually takes "about six months less" than coming back from a full one. He didn't turn that into a month, and nobody should.

Ingram, 29, averaged 21.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the Raptors last season. The heel gave out at the worst time. He sat the final two games of Toronto's first-round series against Cleveland, which the Raptors lost, and had the surgery after that.

The money is real, too. Ingram is on the Clippers' books for $40 million this season, and he holds a $41.9 million player option for 2027-28. The team is paying a star's salary for a player it can't yet put a date on.

He isn't the only veteran starting in the training room. Redden said Bradley Beal has inflammation in his right knee, which followed surgery on his left hip, and won't be available when training camp opens. That's two of the biggest names on the roster watching the first practices instead of running them.

Gradey Dick, the guard who came over from Toronto in the same trade, is the other new face from that deal. And Darius Garland already has a plan for the day Ingram is cleared. "Whenever [Ingram] comes back, when he gets out there, I think our pick-and-roll will be the No. 1 thing we go to," Garland said, according to ESPN.

The next checkpoint is the start of the season, when Redden said the Clippers will look at Ingram again and decide where things stand.