Kawhi Leonard, Clippers agree to three-year extension
Superstar forward Kawhi Leonard has agreed to a contract extension with the Los Angeles Clippers, the team announced Wednesday morning. The extension will be worth three years, $152.4 million, NBA insider Shams Charania was first to report.
“We’re thrilled to continue our relationship with Kawhi,” Lawrence Frank, the Clippers’ president of basketball operations, said in a statement. “He is an elite player, a terrific partner and a relentless worker who knows how to win and makes it his first priority. He elevated our franchise from the moment he arrived. We feel fortunate that Kawhi chose to join the Clippers four years ago, and excited to keep building with him.”
An immediate glance at his numbers may not suggest it, but Leonard, 32, has looked like a rejuvenated version of himself this season. Entering Wednesday, he was averaging 23.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists on 51.6 percent shooting, 43.0 percent from 3-point range–the second-best mark of his career–and 87.1 percent from the free-throw line.
The Clippers, winners of 15 of their last 18, have been an offensive engine in the Western Conference. Since the start of December, they own the league’s second-most efficient offense, boasting a 126.4 offensive rating in non-garbage-time situations–0.8 points behind the league-leading Celtics (126.9), according to Cleaning The Glass.
Leonard is in the third year of a four-year, $176.3 million max extension he signed ahead of the 2021-22 season. The final year of the deal was a $48.7 million player option, which now automatically becomes declined with this new deal.
His extension structure is interesting. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Leonard’s new contract will begin at $52 million next season with approximately $50 million over the following two seasons–different from the typical eight percent annual increases for re-signed players.
He ultimately took less money, too. Under Spotrac’s current cap projections, the cap is expected to raise roughly 4.4 percent from $136 million to a flare $142 million next season, even though it’s raised roughly 10 percent (the max it can be raised) each of the last two years and doesn’t seem to be dipping any time soon with the new TV deal impending.
Under this current $142 million projection, he elected to forego roughly $8.6 million from the full three-year max he was eligible for. Under a $149.6M cap projection (~10 percent increase), that number jumps to over $17 million.
Leonard was also eligible to ink a four-year extension worth approximately $223 million (under the $142MM projection) instead of three. Leonard will be eligibile to sign a two-year extension in 2026 through the 2028-29 season if he chooses to.
The Clippers own flexibility to strike a new deal with star forward Paul George, who’s also having a very good season–which is currently in discussion, per Wojnarowski. If that can get done, and both can stay healthy, perhaps the Clippers can capitalize on their two-to-three-year window before father time arrives.
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