When Luka Doncic arrived in Los Angeles 16 months ago, the Lakers made him a promise.
“Ever since the trade, they’ve always told us: ‘summer of ’26. We’ll show you in the summer of ’26,'” a source close to Doncic said. “So we are so excited that the summer of ’26 is here.”
The promise made sense at the time. The Luka trade happened mid-season, the roster was still built around Anthony Davis, and cap space was limited. The message from Rob Pelinka and JJ Redick was straightforward: Give us one offseason to build around you properly, and we will show you what this franchise can do.
That offseason is now here, with the draft on June 23 and free agency opening June 30. The Lakers have three tradeable first-round picks and potentially $50 million in cap space to work with. So can they actually deliver on what they promised?
The honest answer is: partly, and the degree to which they fall short will come down to factors largely outside their control.
The Center: The Hardest Part to Keep
Doncic’s directive to Pelinka and Redick has not changed since the day he arrived in Los Angeles.
“Luka’s first and foremost desire is an A-list center,” a source told McMenamin.
Anyone who watched Doncic operate with Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford in Dallas understands the reasoning. A rim-running, lob-catching big man unlocks a dimension of his pick-and-roll game that Deandre Ayton — passive and inconsistent in 72 games this past season — never came close to providing.
The problem is that the two centers who would genuinely qualify as A-list are both restricted free agents on teams that have made clear they intend to keep them. As ESPN’s Brian Windhorst noted this week, “The two best ones on the free agent market this summer, Jalen Duren (Detroit Pistons) and Walker Kessler (Utah Jazz), are restricted free agents, and their teams have indicated they want to keep them.”
The Lakers have done due diligence on both, per McMenamin, but the paths to each are complicated. Kessler and the Jazz are at a genuine impasse after ESPN reported Wednesday that Utah put a five-year, $140 million offer on the table and Kessler rejected it.
The Lakers could present an offer sheet starting July 6, forcing Utah’s hand, but the Jazz retain the right to match anything — and almost certainly will. A sign-and-trade is possible but Utah’s asking price has been two first-round picks — something the Lakers likely won’t meet. Duren’s path is equally complicated.
The more realistic center path runs through Dallas. Per Marc Stein, the Mavericks are open to trading Gafford, who averaged 9.5 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.3 blocks this past season. ESPN floated a trade framework built around Jarred Vanderbilt, Dalton Knecht and the No. 25 pick — an achievable package for the Lakers, and one that comes with the benefit of a proven Doncic fit already in place.
Gafford is not Kessler or Duren. He is 27, has dealt with availability issues in back-to-back seasons, and represents more of a known commodity than an ascending star. But he is realistically attainable in a way the restricted free agents are not, and Doncic already knows exactly how to use him.
Whether Gafford clears the A-list bar Doncic set is a fair debate. Whether he is the most viable option available right now is not.
LeBron: The Math Works, the Negotiation Hasn’t Started
LeBron James is currently enjoying his offseason, and his agent Rich Paul has yet to have a substantive conversation with him about his future plans.
“Believe nothing that’s out there because I haven’t had one conversation with him,” Paul said on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” last week. “At the end of the season, I made it clear that I would respect him and the family, because this is going to be a family decision for him.”
That matters because the Lakers’ entire cap structure for this offseason hinges on what James decides and at what salary — and with free agency less than two weeks away, that central conversation has not happened yet.
Per more than half a dozen sources around the league, James is likely to return to the Lakers if he plays a 24th season, with the Warriors presenting the only realistic outside alternative. Golden State can offer just $15.1 million via the midlevel exception, which is $37 million less than what James earned last season and an offer the Lakers can easily beat.
McMenamin reported that a deal in the $20 million to $30 million range would allow Los Angeles to beat the Warriors’ offer, re-sign Reaves and still have money left to add pieces around them. “LeBron rocks with Luka,” one source close to James told ESPN, and playing a complementary role next to Doncic does not figure to be a sticking point in his thinking. The number is where it gets negotiated — and that conversation is still ahead.
Reaves: The Most Controllable Piece — If They Pay
Of all the moving parts this summer, the Reaves situation is the one the Lakers have the most direct control over.
They can offer him five years and $241 million, while the most any outside team can offer is four years and $179 million. Pelinka declared the team’s intent publicly at his exit interview news conference, and Reaves has said repeatedly that he wants to be a Laker for life. Per McMenamin’s sources, the decision will not come down “solely to a dollar figure.”
The risk is the front office miscalculating on the number. If they low-ball him, the Brooklyn Nets are waiting with a four-year max offer and genuine cap space to back it up. Per HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto, the belief around the league is that Reaves stays if the Lakers offer close to market value — and that he will genuinely consider leaving if they do not treat this like the priority it is.
This one is on the front office. The summer of ’26 cannot open with losing the second-best player on the roster over a negotiating miscalculation.
The Wings: A Thin Market With a Real Need
McMenamin identified Peyton Watson of Denver and Tari Eason of Houston as the 3-and-D wing archetypes the Lakers need to address the defensive questions around a Doncic-Reaves backcourt. Both are restricted free agents whose current teams will almost certainly match any offer.
Among unrestricted options, the list includes Tobias Harris, Norman Powell, Anfernee Simons, Coby White and Quentin Grimes — a serviceable group, but not one that meaningfully changes the team’s ceiling.
The more pressing internal question is what happens with Rui Hachimura. He played the best basketball of his Lakers career when it mattered most — averaging 17.5 points on 54.9 percent shooting and 56.9 percent from three during the postseason — while playing out an $18.3 million expiring contract.
Multiple league sources told McMenamin that Hachimura could nonetheless be the odd man out this summer, potentially needing to explore the market to find a deal that reflects what he showed in the playoffs. If the Lakers let him walk, they lose the wing who arguably made the strongest case for a new contract of anyone on the roster this spring — and they compound an already thin wing situation in the process.
The Verdict
Taken together, here is what the summer of ’26 is realistically shaping up to look like. Reaves almost certainly stays if the front office handles it correctly. LeBron probably returns on a reduced salary once that conversation gets started. The center search is the piece most likely to fall short of the A-list standard Doncic asked for, with Gafford representing the attainable option and Kessler or Duren remaining long shots regardless of how aggressively the Lakers pursue them.
The wing market offers depth upgrades but nothing transformative, and the Hachimura situation adds a wrinkle the front office will need to navigate carefully.
That is a better team than last year’s version, and probably one capable of winning 52 to 54 games and competing deep into the playoffs again. Whether it is good enough to contend with a OKC Thunder team that swept them in the second round without Doncic even being healthy, or a Spurs team that just went to the Finals with Victor Wembanyama, is a legitimate question — and one that will not be answered until the roster is actually assembled.
“Luka wants to be a championship team yesterday,” his camp told ESPN.
The summer of ’26 was the promise. The Lakers have the cap space, the picks and the window to make good on it. The next 12 days will show how close they can actually get.
