Luka Doncic will be eligible to sign a contract extension this offseason, but it won’t be for nearly as much as it could’ve been. Once the Dallas Mavericks traded Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, the amount he could earn in an extension went from $345 million over five years to $228 million over four; a massive drop-off.
Doncic now represents the future of the Lakers. If he leaves after next season, they have few young players and next to no draft capital to potentially build around. And LeBron James isn’t getting any younger.
“No, that ain’t my job,” James told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin when asked if he would attempt to convince Doncic to re-sign. “I think … I don’t think, I know, Luka knows how I feel about him. And ultimately, that trade happened for the future. That’s not for me. Luka has to decide what he has to do with his future. He’s [26] years old, I’m 40, so he can’t be basing his career off me. That’s just real. But I hope, obviously, [he stays long term]. Laker fans f—ing love him here. L.A. has accepted him. We love him as a teammate, as a brother. But ultimately, he’s got to make a decision for him. S—, I ain’t going to be around much longer.”
It looked for a while that Doncic was guaranteed to sign the supermax extension and stay in Dallas for his entire career, despite what Mavs GM Nico Harrison says on the contrary. He wanted a statue like his mentor Dirk Nowitzki.
Doncic mentioned after the elimination from the playoffs that he hasn’t given an extension much thought, but he also told ESPN’s Malika Andrews in an interview that he’d like to stay in Los Angeles. But any hope of him returning to Dallas is likely out the window, unfortunately, because of everything the franchise has done and said since trading him away.
