Our exit interview series on the 2026 Clippers concludes with superstar forward Kawhi Leonard, the longest tenured player on the team.
Basic Information
Height: 6’7
Weight: 225 pounds
Position: Small forward/Power forward
Age: 34 (35 in two weeks)
Years in NBA: 15
Key Regular Season Stats: 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.9 steals, and 2.0 turnovers in 32.1 minutes per game across 65 games played (all starts) on 50.5/38.7/89.2 (6.8 3PA, 6.4 FTA) shooting splits (62.9 True Shooting)
Expectations
Coming off an injury-ridden 2025 season, Kawhi Leonard went into the summer of 2025 for his first healthy offseason in several years. While his 2025 campaign hadn’t been great on the whole, it had ended quite strongly, and there was hope that with a revamped supporting cast around him that Kawhi could lead the Clippers to homecourt in the 2026 season. After down statistics in 2025, the expectation for Kawhi personally was to put up stats similar to those in 2023 or 2024, with around 24 points, 6 rebounds, and 4 assists per game on great efficiency and solid defense. He’d made All-NBA Second Team and the All Star Team in 2024, and an optimal outcome for 2026 would have been something similar.
Reality
After an awful first game of the season against the Jazz, Kawhi was quite good in four of the next five games, of which the Clippers won three. It was a disappointing start of the season for the Clippers, but at 3-3, and with Kawhi looking good, there wasn’t a ton of concern.
Welp. Kawhi was ruled out for the next 10 games with a severely sprained ankle, during which the Clippers’ season went off the rails. The Clippers went 2-8 during that stretch, meaning they were 5-11 when he returned. Worse, outside of a monstrous three game stretch in very late November when Kawhi looked dominant (the Clippers incredibly still lost all three of those games), Kawhi was just “ok” by his standards the next few weeks, finally sliding to the dreaded 6-21 nadir of the season on December 18.
Then, as we all know, the Clippers’ season turned around. And while many, many factors went into that turnaround, the single most significant driver of the Clippers’ resurgence was the play of Kawhi. On December 20, he scored 32 points and collected 12 rebounds in a game where he dragged the Clippers to a win over the Lakers. Just a week later, Kawhi scored 55 points against the East-leading Pistons on 17-26 shooting, perhaps the best scoring performance of his entire career. He never quite reached that high again, but Kawhi remained on a roll for months (barring a few missed games in mid-January).
Kawhi was exceptional from mid-December through the end of March, combining high volume scoring with insane efficiency, good rebounding, and solid (if not close to peak Kawhi) defense. The Clippers kept climbing up the standings, and Kawhi entered conversations as lofty as down-ballot MVP votes and All NBA First team rankings.
Unfortunately, like basically everyone else on the Clippers, Kawhi’s close to the season was less robust. He was just “fine” against the Blazers in the Clippers’ two biggest games of the regular season, scoring 23 points on 15 shots in the first loss and 24 points on 20 shots in the second one. Kawhi’s inability to create separation against the Blazers’ cadre of wing defenders was notable. Then, in the play-in game against the Warriors, Kawhi looked old and out of sorts, with a particularly tough offensive possession against Draymond Green getting him roasted online. It was a tough close to what had been the best Kawhi season in a half-decade, though the All-NBA Second Team berth was still quite well deserved.
Future with Clippers
This is the biggest question facing the Clippers this summer outside of who they take with the 5th pick in the draft. Kawhi has one year left on his contract at $50.3M, and is up for an extension this summer. He’s almost 35 years old, and the Clippers have completely reshaped their roster in the past two years to go younger and prepare for the future. The Clippers’ partnership with Kawhi has not always been smooth, and the Aspiration stuff this year (I won’t bother going more in depth on that situation than this) has thrown somewhat of a negative light on the whole era. Everything the Clippers have said is that they want to keep Kawhi going forward – but it’s probably not that simple.
The Clippers have three options. The first is to trade Kawhi, presumably for either a younger star/player more in line with Darius Garland’s age, for true prospects, or for draft picks. The second is to extend him, probably on a deal somewhat less than the max for another two to three years, which would keep him on the team until he is close to retirement. The third is to keep him on the team for the last year of his deal but not extend him. That opens the door for a trade before the deadline next season or just riding out the contract until it expires next summer, at which point another deal could be worked out or Kawhi could leave.
So far, the second option seems to be the most likely based on available reporting. The Clippers like to Kawhi, want to remain competitive, and would prefer having a superstar in hand to court free agents going forward. While Darius Garland is good, would he plus living in LA be enough to attract superstars to the Clippers next summer or two years from now? The Clippers have telegraphed wanting to bring in another superstar in the summer of 2027 for a while now, and that could involve keeping Kawhi.
If it was up to me, personally, I would probably try to trade Kawhi and shift the team in a new, younger direction. That said, it’s all up to what the trade packages are – Kawhi was good enough and available enough last year that I wouldn’t trade him just to trade him. But if the Clippers can get a real package centered around picks, a good prospect, or a good young player more in Garland’s timeline, I’d probably move forward.
If I had to guess, Kawhi will be on the Clippers next year, but that situation is cloudier than it has been for quite a while.
