Luka Dončić may have only spent a few months with the Los Angeles Lakers, but by all accounts, he is ready to make a longer-term commitment. On Aug. 2, the extend-and-trade restrictions limiting what Dončić can earn in a deal with the Lakers expire. At that point, he is expected to sign a contract extension to remain in Los Angeles. At present, he is committed to the Lakers only through the end of the 2025-26 season thanks to a player option he holds after this year. His new deal will lock him up longer.
The question here is how much longer? When Dončić played for the Dallas Mavericks, he was expected to re-sign on a supermax deal that would have added five years to his existing contract. He is no longer eligible for the supermax, though, because the Lakers neither drafted him nor acquired him during the first four years of his career. That limits his potential earnings on a new deal to 30% of the cap in the first year of the deal rather than the 35% he would have gotten in Dallas. It also chops at least one year off the end of the deal. Dončić is only eligible to add four years to his existing contract.
Does he want to add all four? That’s what we’re waiting to find out. There are three potentially viable contract options for Dončić this offseason: a one-, two- or three-year pact, all with player options at the end. Each offers unique advantages. So let’s go through each of them and attempt to figure out what sort of contract Dončić should sign with the Lakers in August.
Under this scenario, Dončić would only commit one extra year to the Lakers: the 2026-27 season. He would then have a player option for the 2027-28 season. Based on the current estimated cap growth of 7% and the maximum allowable 8% annual raises, this is what such a deal would look like:
The obvious appeal of a deal like this would be maximizing flexibility. Dončić has only been with the Lakers for six months. An extension like this would signal a minor commitment, giving them more runway to build their team, but would also give him an easy way out if he isn’t satisfied with whatever they do. By all accounts, though, Dončić has been an active participant in the roster-building process. He reportedly recruited Marcus Smart. His agent, Bill Duffy, represents Deandre Ayton, so if Dončić had any objection to playing with him, they likely wouldn’t currently be teammates. It certainly seems as though Dončić is prepared to make a longer commitment to the Lakers than just a single year.
However, that isn’t the only reason a one-plus-one extension should appeal to Dončić. At least at present, both Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokić are slated to become free agents in 2027. Both could obviously extend before then, and recent league history suggests that if either wants to move, they will do so via trade before ever hitting the open market. Dončić could also scheme to partner with one of them in a city outside of Los Angeles. But even if he’s dead set on Los Angeles as the venue for such a union, giving himself the player option for the 2027-28 season just opens more doors for him.
Say the Lakers need a couple of extra bucks to squeeze in a max salary or add a particular supporting piece. If Dončić is locked into a contractual number, there’s nothing he can do to help the Lakers with that. If he has a player option, though, he can just take slightly less for the 2027-28 season and then make it back up a year later. After all, the Lakers will have full Bird Rights. So if they do indeed plan to remake the roster with 2027 cap space as has been so heavily speculated, having a bit of flexibility on Dončić’s salary for that season would be beneficial. They’d obviously prefer to have him locked in longer-term, but the ball is in Dončić’s court here. This is probably the least likely of our three options, but it’s a tempting one for the roster-building possibilities that come with it.
The basic contract structure here would be basically the same as the deal we covered above. It would just include an extra year.
