The Los Angeles Lakers are having quite an offseason. They turned heads with a series of acquisitions in the summer, but there was not a bigger move made by the Purple & Gold than signing Slovenian superstar Luka Doncic to a massive three-year extension contract worth $165 million, which also comes with a player option for the 2028-29 NBA campaign.
With the deal they gave Doncic, the Lakers made it clearer that he's going to be the focal point of the franchise going forward. But at the same time, the Lakers still have future Hall of Famer LeBron James in the fold.
The four-time NBA Most Valuable Player, even at 40 years old, commands much attention as a feature player. While James has picked up his $52.63 million player option with the Lakers for the 2025-26 season, his future in La La Land (and in the NBA) remains a cloudy subject.
But if things were up to Doncic, he'd rather see James retire as a Laker, according to a DallasHoopsJournal.com report.
“Dončić wants LeBron to retire from the NBA with the Lakers, a source told DallasHoopsJournal.com. Dončić, a native of Slovenia, has frequently said LeBron was the player he watched most growing up. The former Dallas Mavericks superstar enjoyed playing alongside LeBron last season and believes the Lakers can contend for the championship next season, the source said.”
James will be 41 years old in December, but based on how he performed in the 2024-25 season, he can still be a much more impactful player than the average NBA player. Unless he goes into a sharp decline in the 2025-26 campaign, the 21-time NBA All-Star can be expected to be among the chief contributors on the floor to the Lakers.
Last season, his 22nd in the league, James averaged 24.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 8.2 assists through 70 games while shooting 51.3 percent from the field, 37.6 percent from behind the arc and posting a 57.1 effective field goal percentage. Doncic, on the other hand, put up 28.2 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.5 assists in 28 games with the Lakers last season while posting a 43.8 field goal percentage.
Together with a slimmer Doncic, James can help lead the Lakers to another playoff appearance, but hopefully for Los Angeles and its fans, that will be a deeper run in the postseason than what the team had in each of the last two seasons. The Lakers were eliminated in the first round of both the 2024 and 2025 NBA Playoffs after reaching the Western Conference Finals in 2023.
It will be interesting to see what kind of chemistry Doncic and James will have in a full season together with the Lakers, but the main goal remains for LA, which is to win the NBA championship.
