I know his type of injury pretty well and it's a really frustrating one to deal with - whether you're the provider or you're the athlete.

Once Kawhi did come back and was still having excessive pain than anticipated, my guess is that's where everything fractured.

He and his team believed he was misdiagnosed and the medical staff wasn't handling it right (compounded by how the Spurs players were talking about it...I've seen all their interviews and I didn't interpet any of it as malicious, including Parker's comments about "mine was worse and I came back", it was more matter of fact and confusion/uncertainy..but Kawhi by all accounts was seeing it through a very different lens) whereas this type of chronic quadriceps tendopathy is often a very jagged line of healing rather than steady progress.

At that point, both sides separated, you had the release of info that Kawhi was "medically cleared' and that's when shit really hit the fan with Pop talking about "his people" and communication avenues being shut down (which never happens between Pop, Buford, and players). At that point, Kawhi was likely disillusioned enough to say fuck it, I don't want to play here nor am I going to risk it in the playoffs.