Clippers’ Lawrence Frank says goal is to win ‘with Kawhi Leonard’

A few days after Kawhi Leonard declined to get into his future, the Clippers made their stance pretty clear.

They’re not going anywhere. And they don’t want him to, either.

“Our plan is to win with Kawhi,” president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said Friday, via Kris Rihm of ESPN. “At the appropriate time, we’ll sit down, lay out our plan, and if our goals are aligned, we’d like to win with Kawhi.”

Simple enough.

Leonard, for his part, wasn’t in the mood to talk about any of that after the play-in loss to the Warriors.

“Let me cry about this loss a little bit more,” he said. “We’ll have our discussions when that time comes.”

Leonard, 35 in June, is coming off one of his best offensive seasons. He averaged a career-high 27.9 points and played 65 games, which, these days, counts as a major win.

Still, the Clippers missed the playoffs, marking the first time Leonard has been left out when healthy.

So yeah, questions are coming.

Especially after a deadline that turned a few heads. The Clippers moved James Harden to Cleveland for Darius Garland, then shipped out Ivica Zubac in a deal with Indiana that brought back Bennedict Mathurin and other pieces.

Win-now? Re-tool? Somewhere in between?

Frank says it’s the former.

“I think we have great hope and optimism,” he said. “We’ve put ourselves in a good position with young players, draft capital and cap space.”

In other words, the Clippers believe they’re building something that can still contend, not tear down.

There’s also been some noise off the court. The NBA continues to look into Leonard’s past endorsement deal with Aspiration, a former team sponsor that later went bankrupt. Questions were raised about whether it was tied to cap circumvention.

Frank didn’t have much interest in entertaining that.

“If you know Steve Ballmer and his integrity, you know there’s nothing to it,” he said.

So that’s where things stand.

The Clippers want Leonard. Leonard isn’t saying much. And somewhere down the line, they’ll sit down and figure it out.