INGLEWOOD, Calif — Days after Kawhi Leonard sidestepped a question about his future, LA Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank reaffirmed the team’s commitment to Leonard long-term at his end-of-season news conference Friday.
“Our plan is to win with Kawhi,” Frank said. “We obviously showed as an organization that we want to continue and we are driven to win. So, at the appropriate time, we’ll sit down with Kawhi, and very similar to 2024, lay out our plan. And if our goals are aligned, then we’d like to win with Kawhi.”
When asked about his future following the Clippers’ loss to the Warriors in the play-in Wednesday, Leonard was mum. “Let me cry about this loss a little bit more,” Leonard said. “We’ll have our discussions when that time comes.”
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Leonard, who will turn 35 in June, is coming off the best offensive season of his career but will miss the playoffs for the first time in his career when healthy. (The Clippers missed the playoffs in 2021-22, but Leonard missed that season with a torn ACL). He finished with a career high in points (27.9), and played 65 regular-season games; his second season over 60 games played since the 2018-19 season.
The Clippers made a flurry of trades at the deadline, throwing into question Leonard’s future and the team’s long-term approach to contention.
Ahead of the deadline, LA traded guard James Harden to Cleveland for Darius Garland and then traded center Ivica Zubac to Indiana for a package that included Bennedict Mathurin. But Frank pointed to the team’s 15 consecutive seasons and the youth combined with experience on the roster to support the idea that the Clippers are committed to winning and are in a competitive, not rebuilding, period.
“I think we do have great hope and optimism with our future,” he said. “Because as we build that bridge from competitive to contender, we’ve put ourselves in a very good position with emerging young players, draft capital and cap space going forward.”
This season also unfolded under the backdrop of an NBA investigation into an endorsement deal Leonard signed with a now-bankrupt former team sponsor, Aspiration.
Podcaster Pablo Torre reported before the season that former Aspiration employees said they believed Leonard’s endorsement was a way for the Clippers to circumvent the salary cap.
The NBA launched an ongoing investigation into Leonard’s deal with Aspiration in September. Frank said Friday that the investigation didn’t have any impact on the season.
“If you know [owner] Steve [Ballmer] and know Steve’s integrity, you know there’s nothing to it. And I can’t comment on the investigation, but I will stand by what I said up here back in September, October, whenever it was, that we believe and we’re very confident we’re on the right side of this.
