More than a month and a half into the season, the Los Angeles Clippers were left for dead. They were surrounded by controversy, with a contentious handling of Chris Paul’s final season in the NBA and the Aspiration-Kawhi Leonard scandal lurking behind their atrocious early-season record. Well into the third week of December, the Clippers were a Western Conference bottom dweller.

Then they dug themselves out of that hole — err, grave — transformed their aging roster midseason and, with more youth, made a push for the play-in tournament, securing the team’s 15th straight winning season along the way.

That head-turning turnaround came to an abrupt end on Wednesday, when L.A. blew a 13-point fourth-quarter lead to Stephen Curry and a shorthanded Golden State Warriors team on the last legs of its dynasty.

But Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank remains confident in both head coach Tyronn Lue and 34-year-old star forward Kawhi Leonard. In his end-of-season news conference on Friday, Frank told reporters that Lue will maintain his role and that, if Leonard’s goals are aligned with the Clippers, they’d “like to win with Kawhi.”

Frank hired Lue to replace Hall of Famer Doc Rivers in 2020. Frank’s trust in Lue has been apparent, even as the team hasn’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs since its Western Conference finals run in 2021, and the one-time NBA Executive of the Year claims it didn’t waver during L.A.’s abysmal start to the season.

“Ty not being the coach was never, ever, ever a consideration. Even at our lowest point, when we were 6-21, there never ever was any conversation of Ty not being the coach,” Frank said Friday, via Clippers reporter Justin Russo.

“Ty’s going to be the coach here for a long, long time. And I think when you talk about partnerships, and you talk about stable organizations, when you have adversity or you go through tough stretches, you dig in, and you work really, really hard at identifying the problems. Everyone takes ownership of the issues. And then you come together and [say], ‘OK, how can we make things better?’

“I thought Ty and the staff did an unbelievable job of, every day, showing up with a great spirit and just kept at it.”

Frank was complimentary of how Lue managed a new-look roster down the stretch of the season. The Clippers changed things up drastically at the trade deadline.

They traded a 36-year-old James Harden to the Cleveland Cavaliers and a now-29-year-old Ivica Zubac, as well as Kobe Brown, to the Indiana Pacers. In return, the Clippers got back two-time All-Star guard Darius Garland from the Cavs, plus emerging wing Bennedict Mathurin, young forward Isaiah Jackson and some much-needed draft assets — namely two first-round picks — from the Pacers.

One constant was Leonard, who averaged a career-high 27.9 points per game this season and reminded the world of his dominance during this year’s All-Star Game.