Luka Doncic is spending his summer in Slovenia with his daughters, but according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, he remains in constant contact with Los Angeles Lakers president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka and head coach JJ Redick. The message Doncic has delivered since he first arrived in Los Angeles 16 months ago has not changed.
“Luka’s first and foremost desire is an A-list center,” a source close to Doncic told ESPN.
That directive has the Lakers doing their homework. McMenamin reported there are several restricted free agents the team has already done its due diligence on, with two names standing out as the players who would satisfy Doncic’s center request: Jalen Duren of the Detroit Pistons and Walker Kessler of the Utah Jazz. Two others, Peyton Watson of the Denver Nuggets and Tari Eason of the Houston Rockets, round out the list as the type of 3-and-D wings the Lakers are exploring to fill out the roster around their 27-year-old franchise guard.
Detroit Sends a Message of Its Own
The search is not happening quietly. Speaking on ESPN’s “NBA Today” Thursday, McMenamin revealed he had already heard from someone inside the Pistons organization after his report on Doncic’s center request went public.
“I already heard from someone in the Detroit organization today that said, ‘Hey, tell Luka to leave [Jalen Duren] alone,'” McMenamin said.
Duren is entering restricted free agency this summer, which gives the Pistons the right to match any offer sheet a rival team puts in front of him. Detroit has repeatedly signaled it views the 22-year-old center as a foundational piece alongside franchise point guard Cade Cunningham after the Pistons won 60 games and secured the top seed in the Eastern Conference. The pushback was less about altering the Lakers’ plans than about reminding Los Angeles, and everyone else watching, exactly how difficult landing Duren will be.
Duren earned his first All-Star selection this season, averaging 19.5 points, 10.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 0.8 blocks while shooting 65.0 percent from the field across 70 games and making the All-NBA Third Team. His production fell off considerably in the playoffs, though, as he averaged just 10.2 points and 8.5 rebounds on 51.4 percent shooting across 14 postseason games, scoring under 10 points in seven of them. That postseason dip is exactly the kind of leverage Detroit could use to argue Duren has not yet earned the full supermax projected at five years and $287 million, even as the team makes clear it intends to keep him regardless.
Why an Elite Center Fits Luka’s Game
The Lakers’ interest in upgrading the middle of their roster goes well beyond simply adding size. The Western Conference is loaded with dominant interior talent, from Victor Wembanyama, who just led the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA Finals, to Nikola Jokic, the standard for offensive bigs in today’s league. Both players finished ahead of Doncic in this year’s MVP voting.
There is also the matter of what a rim-running, lob-catching center does for Doncic’s own offense. Throughout his career, Doncic has thrived next to big men who can set hard screens, sprint to the rim and finish above it, a formula that worked well in Dallas alongside centers such as Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford. A center who can defend the rim and protect the paint at the other end becomes just as important if the Lakers want to contend with the conference’s best teams.
That demand also raises a practical question for the current roster. Deandre Ayton has a player option worth $8.1 million for next season that he must exercise by June 29, or he becomes an unrestricted free agent himself. Backup Jaxson Hayes, who earned a Slovenian passport to play alongside Doncic on the national team, is also entering unrestricted free agency and in line for a raise after playing for close to the veteran’s minimum the past three seasons.
Kessler Looks Like the More Realistic Path
Of the two centers, Kessler appears to be the more attainable target. While Duren had an underwhelming postseason, Kessler has become a relevant name again as he seems increasingly likely to move on from Utah. The links between Kessler and the Lakers are long-standing, predating even Doncic’s arrival in Los Angeles, and the Lakers called Detroit about Duren as far back as the 2025 trade deadline before ultimately trading for Mark Williams instead.
The complication for both pursuits is the same one that applies to every restricted free agent: once a player signs an offer sheet, his current team has 48 hours to match it. That window would tie up a significant chunk of the Lakers’ available cap space while Detroit or Utah decides whether to keep their player, a risk that could cost Los Angeles a shot at other targets if either team chooses to match.
The Wing Options Behind the Centers
Watson and Eason represent the other half of the Lakers’ restricted free agency homework, and both fill a different need on the roster as 3-and-D wings.
Watson enjoyed a breakout season in Denver, averaging career highs of 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists while shooting 49.1 percent from the field and 41.1 percent from 3-point range. He grew up in the Los Angeles area and played collegiately at UCLA. The Nuggets are eager to keep him, but luxury tax considerations have complicated the picture, and Denver has reportedly explored moving other pieces, including Christian Braun, to help balance the books and retain Watson long-term.
Eason gave the Lakers and their fans an extended look during the first round of the 2026 playoffs, when the two teams met in a six-game series. He averaged 10.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.2 steals and 0.5 blocks last season while shooting 35.8 percent from 3-point range, and The Athletic’s John Hollinger has described him as a “chaos agent” whose size, instincts and defensive disruption make him one of the more intriguing young wings in the league. Houston is expected to pay to keep him, since he is one of the few players on the Rockets’ roster who can consistently shoot from the outside.
What It Means for the Lakers’ Offseason
Even with close to $50 million in cap space and as many as nine players from last season’s roster facing free agency, restricted free agency remains a difficult and inefficient way to build a team. Still, it is clearly worth the Lakers’ time given how thin the unrestricted center market looks by comparison.
The most likely outcome, based on how the situation is developing, is that the Lakers continue to monitor all four names while their bigger-picture offseason questions, including LeBron James’ decision on a 24th season and Austin Reaves’ looming free agency, play out in parallel. Doncic, for his part, has made clear through people close to him that he wants the Lakers to deliver on promises made since the trade that brought him to Los Angeles. As one source close to Doncic put it, the organization has spent the better part of a year telling him: “summer of ’26. We’ll show you in the summer of ’26.”
That summer has now arrived, and the early maneuvering around Duren, Kessler, Watson and Eason suggests the Lakers intend to take Doncic’s center request seriously, even if Detroit has already made clear it will not make that pursuit easy.
