[Max Drawdown] When to use realized vs. unrealized gains?

I am working on a long term swing trading strategy using LETFs. In one particular trade for example, the strategy buys before a major peak and ultimately sells near break even.

If I track from the peak of unrealized gains to the sell order, it is almost -30%. If I track from when it bought to when it sold, it’s actually +2%.

My question is, what’s the proper way to do this? Is there a mathematical standard? Are they both useful metrics different reasons? Do we only care about realized drawdown during backtesting?