Nick Smith Jr. is going to run an offense this season, just not in Los Angeles. The former Lakers guard has agreed to a one-year contract with Real Madrid, HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto reported Saturday, citing Smith’s Klutch Sports agents, and the 22-year-old is expected to step in as the EuroLeague power’s starting point guard.
Free agent guard Nick Smith Jr. has agreed to a one-year deal with Real Madrid, agents Lucas Newton and Calvin Andrews of Klutch Sports told @hoopshype. He averaged 7.6 points in 17.5 minutes during three NBA seasons with the Hornets and Lakers. He’ll be Real Madrid’s lead guard. pic.twitter.com/nDJo7H65hb
— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) September 12, 2026
The first person to congratulate him publicly was Bronny James, which is a detail that carries more weight than a typical Instagram comment. When the Lakers had to decide which of their two young backup guards to keep this summer, they declined Smith’s team option and let Bronny’s contract become fully guaranteed.
Three months later, the one who left has a bigger role than either of them had in Los Angeles.
A lead-guard job in Luka Doncic’s old building
Real Madrid is the club where Luka Doncic became a professional before the 2018 draft, and it remains one of the two or three most important teams in European basketball. Scotto’s report describes Smith as the team’s lead guard, which is a different job than the one he held in the NBA, where he spent three seasons as a bench scorer for the Hornets and Lakers.
The 27th pick in the 2023 draft averaged 7.6 points in 17.5 minutes per game across those three years. Smith landed in Los Angeles after Charlotte waived him last September to get down to a legal roster, and he carved out a real, if modest, role with the Lakers.
He appeared in 30 games for Los Angeles last season and averaged 6.2 points in 12.5 minutes per game while shooting 39.5 percent from 3-point range. Those are the numbers of a useful 10th man on a playoff team, which is what he was until the front office decided the 2026-27 roster would be built differently.
What the Lakers decided in June
The Lakers held a team option on Smith for this season and declined it in late June, sending him into free agency. Bronny’s $2.3 million salary for 2026-27 became fully guaranteed one day before LeBron James informed the team he would not be returning, which means the Lakers locked in the son before they knew for certain they were losing the father.
Put the two guards’ 2025-26 seasons next to each other and the decision is not obviously about production. Bronny at 42 game averaged 8.9 minutes and 2.9 points per game on 38.6 percent 3-point shooting.
Smith played fewer games but more minutes when he was active, and he scored more than twice as much per night on a nearly identical 3-point percentage. Bronny did have the edge in games played and in assists, at 1.2 per game to Smith’s 1.0, and he closed the regular season with a run of double-digit scoring nights in April that Smith never matched.
None of that makes the call indefensible. Bronny is a year younger, was drafted by this front office and carries a team option for 2027 that keeps him cheap and controllable.
Smith was on an expiring option with no long-term hold. But the numbers do explain why the reaction on X to Scotto’s report skewed toward the idea that the Lakers kept the wrong one, and why Smith’s new job title stings a little for the people who watched both of them last spring.
The reaction from inside the locker room
Whatever the fan base thinks, Smith’s former teammates were quick to celebrate the move. After he posted a photo in his Real Madrid uniform, Bronny left a comment that Martinez relayed in full.
“Damn thats fire bro be great!!!” James wrote.
Adou Thiero and Jake LaRavia added their own encouragement in the same thread, which is a small thing but a useful one. There is no indication of friction between Smith and the players who stayed, and Bronny in particular has spent the summer as the target of the comparison rather than a participant in it.
Where Bronny fits without LeBron
The backcourt Bronny is competing in this fall looks nothing like the one he entered as a rookie. Marcus Smart and Luke Kennard are gone.
Collin Sexton and Quentin Grimes are in, and Doncic and Austin Reaves will handle the overwhelming majority of the ball-handling when they are on the floor. That leaves Bronny competing for the minutes that Smith used to get, on a roster that currently sits at 16 guaranteed contracts and has to shed at least one body before opening night.
It is also the first season he will play without his father in the building, and the first in which the organization’s investment in him has to stand on its own. The guarantee is done.
The team option for next summer is the next decision point, and it will be made by a front office that now has Sexton, Grimes and a second assistant general manager in Eric Amsler evaluating the guard rotation with fresh eyes.
Two bets, two outcomes
The Lakers made a bet in June that a 21-year-old second-round pick with two years of development and a cheap contract was worth more to them than a 22-year-old former first-rounder on an expiring option. That is a reasonable position for a team that just turned over most of its roster and needed to control costs at the bottom of it.
Smith made the opposite bet on himself and took a starting job in Madrid over another year of fighting for scraps behind Doncic and Reaves. Both can be right. Smith gets a season of real minutes in a serious league, and if it goes well the NBA will see a different player when he comes back.
Bronny gets a season to prove the Lakers kept the right guard, on a team where the backup point guard job is finally his to lose. The scoreboard on that decision does not start running until October, and it will be one of the quieter storylines to track on a roster with much louder ones.
