Why use NOPAT as numerator for ROIC

Question

I have been researching online, and it appears that the prevailing recommendation is to use NOPAT (Net Operating Profit After Taxes) for calculating return on invested capital. The purpose of using NOPAT is to remove the influence of leverage from the calculation. However, I've noticed that the denominator of this ratio represents invested capital, which can be funded by leveraging. This raises the question of why NOPAT is used in the numerator, as it seems to create a fundamental gap in the analysis.