According to Chris Haynes of Yahoo! Sports, Kawhi Leonard has chosen to re-sign with the LA Clippers.
Free agent star Kawhi Leonard has decided that he is re-signing with the Los Angeles Clippers and terms are being discussed, league sources tell @YahooSports.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) August 6, 2021
Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN made it clear that he didn’t see Leonard not making this choice, but Haynes has now confirmed this.
It was priority number one of the Clippers’ offseason to re-sign Leonard. They had no other choice but to bring him back, and they made it happen. The Clippers are now once again, right in the thick of championship contention with this move.
The LA Clippers were a Kawhi Leonard re-signing away from being one of the favorites for the Western Conference.
Kawhi Leonard will unfortunately be out for the LA Clippers to start the season with a partially torn ACL.
Regardless, this move needed to be made. They already committed to Paul George via his contract extension in December, and needed to make sure they committed to the other half of the duo that they decided to turn their franchise around with in the 2019 offseason.
Kawhi and PG are the best duo in basketball. They are the only duo to have both members be All-NBA players in this past season. Kawhi was a First-Team All-NBA selection this year, and PG13 was a big part in keeping the ship afloat when Leonard went down.
This team is built around Kawhi, and while he will likely miss a significant portion of the season, I expect him to be back in time for the playoffs.
If he’s back for the postseason, the Clippers will be able to beat anyone. The Clips took the Suns to six games in the Western Conference Finals this year without Kawhi (and got there without Kawhi). Now that LA has him back, along with a very similar roster and an elite head coach who’s only going to get better, the Clippers are my favorite to win the West.
The two-time Finals MVP is still working out the details of the contract, of course, but he’ll be worth every penny he signs for. Nobody contending for him this offseason still has the cap room to acquire him, so there isn’t any competition. He won’t cost anything the Clippers totally can’t handle, so they will not be overpaying a single dollar for the two-time Defensive Player of the Year.