Christian Koloko

Within an in-depth feature for ESPN.com, Ramona Shelburne and Brian Windhorst take a closer look at the Lakers‘ efforts to “delicately” transition from their LeBron James era to the Luka Doncic era and the challenges they’ve faced along the way.

As Shelburne and Windhorst detail, James wasn’t surprised by the fact that the Lakers have prioritized Doncic in recent months and understands the team has to set itself up for the future. However, “it also did not go down easily,” according to ESPN’s duo, who point out that LeBron specifically chose the Lakers as a free agent back in 2018, whereas Doncic never asked to be a Laker and had been planning to remain in Dallas for his entire career.

Shelburne and Windhorst suggest the Lakers have signaled their shift to Doncic with a “series of microaggressions” that started with not giving James any advance warning about the February trade for the Mavs star. Those microaggressions also included letting Doncic – but not LeBron – know ahead of time about the sale to Mark Walter so that he had a message of congratulations ready to go on social media, as well as not offering to extend James’ contract beyond the 2025/26 season.

James has responded to the Lakers’ decisions with a series of “cryptic hints” of his own, with agent Rich Paul‘s statement in late June representing the most notable one. According to Shelburne and Windhorst, Paul’s comments about LeBron wanting “to make every season he has left count” were interpreted in many different ways by teams around the NBA — some executives saw the statement as James pushing the Lakers to go all-in on this year’s roster, some viewed it as a soft trade request, and at least one considered it an “elaborate pout” due to the lack of contract extension.

Even if nothing comes of that statement and James spends the 2025/26 season with the Lakers without incident, it has had an impact. According to ESPN’s sources, veteran center Brook Lopez was strongly considering the Lakers in free agency due to their open starting spot at center, but was “wary of the uncertainty” surrounding James’ future and ultimately opted for a backup role with the Clippers instead.

Here’s more from around the Pacific:

• Christian Koloko is still a restricted free agent, having not yet accepted his two-way qualifying offer from the Lakers, but there have been no indications to this point that he’ll be changing teams this offseason. The big man was added to the Lakers’ Summer League roster before the club’s Las Vegas opener on Thursday, notes Dave McMenamin of ESPN (Twitter link).
• If and when the Suns finalize a buyout agreement with Bradley Beal, the expectation is that they’ll use that roster spot on a point guard or possibly a combo guard, tweets John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports 98.7.
• The Clippers haven’t really deployed a traditional power forward in recent years, but they got exactly that sort of player when they acquired John Collins from Utah earlier this week, which will change the makeup of their roster, writes Law Murray of The Athletic. “Sometimes you have to make a decision between getting a great athlete who may struggle shooting the ball from range, versus getting the really skilled player who just maybe is just an average functional athlete,”  president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank said of the move. “John has shown the ability to be both, which is huge.”