The Lakers enter the offseason with Luka Doncic under contract, as well as a whole lot of questions outside of the Slovenian star.
One of the key inflection points is what comes next for LeBron James. He could re-sign with the team, leave in free agency, or retire. If he does re-sign with the Lakers, how much does he command on his next contract?
Whether there is a right price to be found between the team and the 41-year-old star, who projects to be the third option offensively, is a topic of debate in the recent Los Angeles Times roundtable, with columnist Bill Plaschke believing that the two sides are at odds in terms of what they’d want in a potential deal, though others disagree.
The panel found consensus in the desire to bring back free agent Austin Reaves, and in the need to upgrade the center spot, regardless of whether or not Deandre Ayton picks up his $8.1MM player option for next season.
More news and notes from the Pacific Division:
- The Warriors hosted six players in pre-draft workouts on Tuesday, the team announced (via Twitter): Donovan Atwell (Texas Tech), Quadir Copeland (NC State), Josh Dix (Creighton), RJ Godfrey (Clemson), Ugonna Onyenso (Virginia), and Oziyah Sellers (St. John’s). Golden State has picks 11 and 54 in the 2026 draft. Onyenso is the highest-rated player on this list, coming in at 43 on Jeremy Woo’s big board for ESPN due to his impressive shot-blocking ability.
- Stephen Curry‘s deal with the Chinese shoe company Li-Ning is worth over $400MM over 10 years, reports ESPN’s Shams Charania (via Twitter), who notes that the Warriors‘ star had other companies making competitive offers. Charania previously reported that the deal would allow Curry to sign other athletes to his brand and expand beyond sneakers (Twitter link).
- While the Spurs and Knicks prepare to face off in the Finals, the Kings are stuck with reminders of where they’ve been and where they’re going. The year after Tyrese Haliburton led the Pacers to the Finals, the Kings now prepare to watch the coach they fired, Mike Brown face off against the other point guard they traded, De’Aaron Fox, while they are stuck trying to navigate the same type of dysfunction that defined the franchise for 20 years, writes Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee (subscriber link).
Sacramento will always be basketball hell
The Kings deserve to be moved to San Jose, which is a superior city by every single metric.
My 2 favorite things about San Jose are the Pink Poodle for entertainment and Campbell Park for pickup hoops.
The Kings moving there would be 3 favorite things.
Lacob will never allow it
Curry got a 10 year deal because he plans on playing 10 more years. Like I keep telling you all. Sigh.
Wonder if it’s going to affect Butler’s future in GS now that both represent Li Ning
There’s very likely a timeline out there where GSW never hires Kerr and Curry gets SGA’s whistle, so on that timeline right now Curry has a 10-0 record in Finals, and Nike Air Curry’s outsell Jordans due to cooler designs and better feel when wearing.
Instead we get 4-2 and Curry in two brands no one cares about
Oof
Curry will play 10 more years. Three for Golden State and seven for Guangdong.
lmao but he’s staying 1 team and will be playing on GSW at age 53.
16! More! Years!
LeBron snd Bronny become the 1st father- son duo to retire together.
Literally every other LAL player entering free agency is more important for them than LeUnc. They already know they aren’t signing him because he’s not taking anything remotely close to an MLE and the only reason their cap space worked out so far was because AR got completely dumpstered in his RFA deal. Even at the time it was considered a huge underpay but “no other teams wanted to put the cap space down on a bid for him.”
It’s already known they’re offering a bag to Austin now. Whether that’ll pay out for them or not we’ll see, but I think if they want to stay competitive they can’t just let half their roster walk. Maybe they can get a miraculous sign and trade done with LeMickey, but that’s unlikely unless they have something in place already, since his cap hit hangs over their head as a cap hold until they let it go.
My prediction is he signs with another team for $60mm-$80mm on a 1+1 player option deal with a no trade clause. He will also wait awhile before signing this contract for the drama and media.
Curry taking money from a company that’s known for FORCED labor? Shame.
Nope. That is Sinophobic propaganda coming from the worst possible people. It was the “North Korean” labor used by them. But maybe NK isn’t what we have been told all along? Maybe Rodman was right about them? “Forced labor” is literally what Americans make people who got arrested do. We see them picking up trash on the freeways.
I hate seeing China scare tactics and sinopboic lies that morons like Enes Kanter cry about all day. I went to China last year and its literally awesome and there are so many lies told my hateful bigots who just cant stand seeing capitalism get made to look bad by communism. China’s worst human rights issues would rank like 900,435th on USA’s list btw, lets clean up our backyard before criticizing others. China is 4x bigger than the USA – and most Americans are very narrow minded and prone to accepting lies and propaganda as realities. Average American has no clue what 1.5B people in a country looks and feels like. And the worst part is they could all just go there and see for themselves. USA is missing out, we should stop letting grifters run our country and instead let competent nerds who are obsessed with doing the best job they can run things, instead of these geriatric crackheads hell bent on destroying us all.
I can’t tell if this is a fairly elaborate troll, a paid shill, or someone who just honestly bought into propaganda during a vacation. I’m going with option 3 personally.
Are you American? You are in no position to talk about propaganda, you have been propagandized every moment of your life.
Here’s a simple fact: China has zero bombs dropped since 1979. USA has averaged 1,979 bombs dropped every single day since 1979 (Laos doing a lot of that legwork). Yet USA is scared of China? Interesting…
lmao David. You went there and saw one zillionth of the country, so therefore they don’t have human rights issues. You sound like Bill Burr saying the Saudi Arabian government is great because he saw an Arby’s while he was shilling there.
Give this a read, unless you think Human Rights Watch is Sinophobic.
link to hrw.org
I am available. I’ll fix the Kings in three years. But I have to start at draft……
Who would you pick if you were the kings at #7 ? Or maybe you trade the pick and go after a specific player?
Sorry if you mentioned this before and I didn’t see it.
Bigger issues than drafting somebody at 7 this year won’t really change anything but would be a start in the right direction.
Believe it or not, he would draft Raynaud again.
Just joking, but I would actually love to see a typical fan run the Kings. How could it be worse than what they have done the last two decades?