Klay Thompson’s name and the Lakers are back in the same conversation for the first time since he chose Dallas over Los Angeles in 2024, and this time the opening came from the Dallas side of the story.
In a roster analysis published Monday, The Athletic’s Christian Clark reported that whether Thompson opens a third season with the Mavericks is genuinely unsettled, that Dallas has shopped him without finding a workable trade and that the 36-year-old guard is open to returning to Los Angeles.
“My understanding is that Thompson would welcome a return to Los Angeles, where he spent part of his childhood and still owns a home,” wrote Clark. “The Miami Heat are another team frequently mentioned in NBA circles as a potential landing spot for the future Hall of Famer.”
Thompson is owed $17.5 million this season, the final year of the three-year deal he signed with Dallas in 2024, and he is on track for unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2027. That news about Los Angeles was enough to set off a wave of headlines casting the Lakers and Miami Heat as active bidders. The reporting itself says something more modest, and for Lakers fans, understanding the difference matters.
What was reported — and what wasn’t
Clark’s report describes Thompson’s openness, not a Lakers pursuit. The distinction is not pedantic.
Nothing in the piece indicates the Lakers have engaged Dallas on a trade or signaled plans to chase Thompson if he shakes free, and the freshest reporting on the Lakers’ side of the equation points in the opposite direction.
Speaking on the “Clutch Scoops” podcast in late July, ClutchPoints reporter Tomer Azarly addressed where the Thompson market stood.
“We’ve heard teams like the Lakers at times, they’re probably out of it now,” Azarly said.
Still, the geography of the report does most of the work. If Thompson wants Los Angeles, the Lakers are effectively the only door.
The Clippers are operating under the cloud of the NBA’s investigation into the Kawhi Leonard salary cap matter, and Clark named the Heat as the other team consistently mentioned around Thompson — a team whose own path, notably, also runs through a buyout rather than a trade.
The Lakers do not need to be actively pursuing Thompson today for this report to matter. It establishes that if he ever becomes a free agent, the pull toward one specific team in one specific city is real.
Dallas holds all the leverage right now
The reason this is a slow-burn story rather than a breaking one is that the Mavericks control every branch of the decision tree. Dallas is carrying 16 standard contracts, one more than the regular-season limit, so a move of some kind is mandatory — but nothing forces that move to involve Thompson.
The organization’s preference has been consistent. NBA insider Jake Fischer reported last week that Dallas wants to keep Thompson available as a trade asset and has no appetite for buying him out and watching him leave for nothing.
Dallas has no incentive to pursue a buyout and Thompson would have to surrender a significant chunk of his $17.5 million to get one. A player who led the Mavericks in long-range shooting across both of his seasons there retains real value as a deadline chip, and the front office knows it.
The hard cap leaves the Lakers exactly one path
Here is where the Lakers’ offseason math takes over. Los Angeles is hard-capped at the first apron, a ceiling triggered by the Walker Kessler sign-and-trade, and the roster is already snug against it.
Absorbing Thompson’s $17.5 million in a trade is a practical impossibility — the Lakers spent weeks unable to solve a smaller version of this same puzzle in their pursuit of Jonathan Kuminga, where even the gap between a salary in the $12 million to $15 million range and one closer to $18 million to $20 million proved decisive.
The Athletic’s Jovan Buha laid out that constraint plainly on Monday in the context of those Kuminga talks, explaining that the combined salaries of Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Kessler squeeze the books, and that the front office wants to preserve access to the non-taxpayer midlevel exception in the summer of 2027.
That second point is the tell. The Lakers are protecting next summer’s flexibility, and a win-now trade for a 36-year-old shooter at $17.5 million is precisely the kind of move that priority rules out.
Which leaves one realistic route: Thompson negotiates a buyout with Dallas, forfeits money to do it and signs in Los Angeles at the veteran minimum or something close to it — the same low-cost mechanism the front office used on the Kevon Looney signing earlier this offseason.
That path requires two things the Lakers do not control: Dallas softening its no-buyout stance, and Thompson deciding the homecoming is worth seven figures of walked-away salary.
If neither happens, the fallback is patience. He is a 2027 unrestricted free agent, and the Lakers will have their midlevel exception waiting.
The hometown thread and the 2024 near-miss
The emotional logic behind Clark’s line is not hard to trace. Mychal Thompson won two championships with the Lakers between 1987 and 1991, remains a fixture on ESPN LA’s airwaves, and his son was born in Los Angeles in 1990 and spent part of his childhood there.
The family’s Lakers roots run a generation deep. And the two sides have been here before. When Thompson left Golden State in 2024, reports at the time pegged Dallas and the Lakers as his final two options before he chose the Mavericks and the chance to play alongside Doncic.
The irony writes itself two years later: The teammate who tipped his decision toward Dallas now runs the offense in Los Angeles. A pairing that made Thompson choose the Mavericks is the same pairing that would await him if he ever doubled back.
What Thompson still offers, and the honest timeline
The basketball case is narrower than it was in 2024, but it is not gone. Thompson appeared in 69 games for Dallas last season, mostly off the bench for the first time since his rookie year, and averaged a career-low 11.7 points in 21.7 minutes per game while shooting 38.3 percent from 3-point range — a tick above his 37.9 percent career mark.
The volume is down, but the skill the Lakers would actually be buying is intact, and a Doncic-run offense manufactures exactly the catch-and-shoot looks that skill feeds on. His postseason resume — 19.2 points per game on 43.6 percent 3-point shooting across 158 career playoff games — is the kind of pedigree that plays in April even in a reduced role.
The timeline is the sober part. Any Thompson resolution could slide closer to training camp, and Dallas retains the option of simply holding him into the season as a deadline asset.
For the Lakers, that means this is a story to monitor rather than a signing to expect: The buyout window may never open, and if it does, Miami will be standing in it too.
What changed Monday is smaller but real — for the first time since he said no in 2024, the reporting says Klay Thompson is thinking about home.
