Los Angeles Clippers small forward Kawhi Leonard said that returning to action after 253 days out on Saturday was "the easy part".

Leonard scored 12 points in 19 minutes against the Atalanta Hawks as the Clippers won 131-105 at the Intuit Dome in his first game since April.

"[There] was nothing hard about playing tonight," he said after the game.

"We did the right steps to get me to this point, and playing basketball was the easy part of it. This is what I love to do. The hard part is not playing and having to rehab and not competing with my teammates."

The 33-year-old has struggled with injury in the interim between playing, with inflammation in his surgically-repaired right knee keeping him out for the entire season up to now.

Along with the 12 points he scored, Leonard also added three assists, a rebound and a steal.

"I took the shots that I got," Leonard said. "We're still easing me into the game. We're on nobody's, I guess, timetable. Anybody watching that wants me to score 20, 30 points or be aggressive, we are not on no-one's time frame.

"We know what's ahead of us, and we have to keep building in the right direction. So, we're facing it like it was a preseason game tonight, and we'll keep moving the same way until I'm able to build up my minutes."

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Leonard was restricted to 20 minutes on court, with just three minutes and 36 seconds of those coming in the second half of the game – all in the third quarter – as the Clippers try to manage his return properly.

"You see with his presence on the floor, it makes it a lot easier for everybody else," Clippers coach Ty Lue said. "It was good to have him. Now he's got to continue to keep building off of it."

"He's cleared to play. Just like I said, we're treating this as a preseason for him so he gets his legs up under him. Make sure to come out of the game tonight, feeling good. And our goal is just to keep progressing every game and so tonight was a good start."

On a good night for the Clippers, eight players managed to get into double figures including guard Normal Powell, who led the way with 20 points. Powell was another who was excited by Leonard's return to the team.

"I've been talking to him, telling him I can't wait for him to come back," said Powell on his team-mate's return.

"The attention that's been on me and James [Harden] to start the year, [but] with Kawhi on the floor, he draws so much attention, double-teams, I'm able to finally get some catch and shoot threes.

"I'm really excited. First game, he looked really good. So we'll just continue to try and build on that."