Lakers have $48M in cap space to build around Luka Dončić

How the Lakers can build a championship roster around Luka Dončić

The Lakers have $48 million in cap space and question marks surrounding most of their players, including LeBron James

By Sam Quinn

May 12, 2026 at 12:16 pm ET • 21 min read

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The 2025-26 Los Angeles Lakers , all things considered, probably outperformed expectations. They beat their projected win total by 6.5 games. They solved the fit issues between Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves and LeBron James in a blistering 16-2 March. They won a playoff series that Dončić missed and Reaves didn't join until Game 5. Purely on paper, the season was a success.

In reality, very little was actually accomplished. This season, more than anything, was about buying time. Time for James' max contract to expire and create cap space. Time to gain further access to their own draft capital for trade purposes. Time to evaluate what they had so they'd know what they need. The last season and a half was an uncomfortable collision between the end of the last era and the beginning of the next. Starting this summer, the real work of building the Luka Dončić Lakers begins.

The end goal of that effort, functionally, is building a team that can compete with the Oklahoma City Thunder . They're the bar, at least alongside the San Antonio Spurs . Those are the teams the Lakers are going to have to beat to win a championship, and they're what make this season, on some level, a disappointment.

The Lakers acquired Dončić in February 2025. It's been a season and a half. They have not yet acquired a single player who appears poised to be a central part of their strategy against the Thunder moving forward. They just played Oklahoma City in a series that the Thunder frankly slept through. The first halves were competitive. The second halves, when the Thunder woke up, were not. Oklahoma City became the first team in 26 years to win the first three games of a series by more than 16 points.

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Dončić's absence makes proper evaluation difficult, of course. Everyone was overburdened without him. But Deandre Ayton was a mess and called out for his effort on the Game 3 broadcast. Jake LaRavia was borderline unplayable. Marcus Smart and Luke Kennard had their moments, but Smart is 32 and injury-prone, while Kennard's offense came and went throughout the postseason. Both can become free agents this offseason. Reaves, though injured, played most of the series with a target on his back defensively. The only Lakers who consistently held up were the 41-year-old James, whose future is uncertain, and Rui Hachimura , also an impending free agent with serious defensive question marks.

The Lakers are almost starting from scratch here. They have Dončić. They'll probably have Reaves. JJ Redick will be their coach, and this year's over-performance suggests he's a keeper. And they'll need basically everything else: at least one center better than anyone they currently have, multiple wing defenders who can shoot and another ball-handler to replace James, whether he leaves now or in a year. We can say very little with confidence about who will be playing for the 2027-28 Lakers, when Dončić will be in the final year of his contract and presumably expecting to seriously contend.

That's what this offseason is about. Beating modest Vegas expectations and knocking out dysfunctional opponents is no longer relevant. The entire goal is to find the players who will surround Dončić during the prime of his Lakers tenure. Who those players might be and how the Lakers can try to get them are what we'll try to figure out today.

The short-term financial outlook

The projected salary cap for the 2026-27 NBA season is $165 million. The Lakers currently owe roughly $92.6 million to nine players, and their No. 25 overall pick will cost about $3.2 million. Factor in a $20.9 million cap hold for Reaves, allowing them to go over the cap to re-sign him, and you're looking at roughly $116.7 million in obligations, giving the Lakers a bit more than $48 million in projected cap space.

That figure is not set in stone. It assumes that Ayton and Smart will both pick up their player options. Either of them could decline, which would give the Lakers more space -- Ayton's option is for $8.1 million, and Smart's is for $5.4 million -- but it would mean either replacing them or re-signing them.

At this stage, Ayton is probably slightly more likely than not to pick up his option. He and Dončić share an agent, Bill Duffy, who helped set Ayton up to join the Lakers, and given his roller-coaster performance, his market will likely be soft. Smart, who had a great year for what he was paid, will probably opt out and seek a bigger payday. If he does, the Lakers can give him a 20% raise if they operate above the salary cap, they can re-sign him using cap space, or they can re-sign him using the cap room mid-level exception projected at $9.4 million.

So, what does a projected $48 million in cap space actually mean? It means that if the Lakers want to either absorb outside players through trade without sending money back or pursue external free agents, they have $48 million to do that with. After that $48 million is spent, they'd have that cap room mid-level exception, and beyond that, only minimum salaries. Creating that $48 million in cap space means renouncing their rights to all of their free agents. Most notably, that would be James, but it would also include Hachimura, Kennard and Jaxson Hayes .

If the Lakers want to retain some of their own free agents, they are free to do so. Say James is willing to come back for $20 million. The Lakers could simply pay him that much and then still have $28 million to spend. If they want to bring back all of their free agents, they would opt to operate above the salary cap. That would mean retaining their rights to everyone, bringing them back, and hoping to use the non-taxpayer mid-level exception projected at $15 million to add one impact free agent.

If the Lakers are pursuing any big-name, external free agents or well-paid veterans through trades, they're probably operating below the cap and will have to pay what it takes to get their targets. If they're operating above the cap and running it back, the idea will probably be to overpay everyone on bloated, one-year contracts. This will allow them to kick the cap space can down the road to 2027, when the free-agent class is stronger, and give themselves a lot of tradable salary to work with during the season. We'll cover every scenario below.

What do the Lakers have to trade?

Part of the reason the Lakers hesitated to make a major trade at this year's deadline was that they had only one pick to trade, their 2031 selection. By waiting until this summer, that number ballooned to three. Teams can trade picks seven years out, so when the league calendar flips, their 2033 pick is in play, and once the Lakers actually use their 2026 pick, the Stepien Rule restrictions preventing them from going multiple years without a pick (since they owe Memphis their 2027 choice) expire.

In addition to those three outright first-round picks, the Lakers can trade first-round swaps in three more drafts: 2028, 2030 and 2032. Don't sleep on the value of those swaps. In a flattened lottery environment, they're more valuable than they've ever been. The Thunder have even traded outright picks for swaps in the past. That might seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you're as asset-rich as they are. Oklahoma City doesn't have enough roster spots for all of its picks. They don't want volume. They want upside. The Spurs have targeted swaps for the same reason. There will probably be a number of teams looking to turn swaps into lower-upside outright picks this offseason. The Lakers could be one of them.

If the Lakers are using their cap space in the trade market, well, that's straightforward. Being able to absorb $48 million in salary without sending any back is enormously valuable and would allow the Lakers to sign any player in the NBA except the league's 25 highest-paid stars. However, given the limitations that would impose on the Lakers in free agency and in retaining their own players, they'd likely only use cap space in a big trade if it were for a true star.

More likely, the Lakers will try to match money in the trade market and keep their cap space separate. The two likeliest Lakers to move in this scenario would be Jarred Vanderbilt , who makes around $12.4 million, and  Dalton Knecht , who makes around $4.2 million. Neither is a desirable contract, but if the Lakers are sending out draft picks, taking them is probably the cost of doing business for the acquiring team. If either Smart or Ayton picks up their options, they could be used as a matching salary as well.

The Lakers could also sign-and-trade their own free agents to create more matching money if needed, but that's a complicated process that requires cooperation from the player, interest from the team, and the navigation of some complex CBA mechanics like base-year compensation. As it's unlikely outside a few niche cases, it's not worth covering for now. Where it might come up, we will address it.

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What to do with LeBron James?

In January, James leaving the Lakers, either through free agency or retirement, felt inevitable. March and April were far better. He figured out how to function as a No. 3 option . He's comfortable in Los Angeles. The chemistry felt real. It's hard to imagine he'd find a better chance at contending than the version of the Lakers that dominated the league before Dončić and Reaves got hurt. It makes sense to bring him back, but only under the right circumstances.

If he's willing to return for the minimum or even the cap room mid-level exception? Awesome. Take him. Even now, he generates massive surplus value at that price point. Signing him at this price does nothing to interrupt any other plans the Lakers might have. They could still use the full $48 million to improve. If James is willing to take this sort of discount, it's probably with an understanding that the Lakers are using their resources, both the money and the picks, to actually do so. It would be a joint effort to push for the 2027 title.

If the Lakers determine their best course is preserving their cap space for the 2027 offseason, re-signing James to a hefty one-year deal would also be fine. In this scenario, they'd mostly be running back this year's roster on short-term deals. Maybe they'd use those big expiring contracts to make an in-season trade. More likely, winning it all next year isn't the plan, and James is returning mostly for the money. With full Bird Rights, the Lakers could pay him anything up to the max.

Where the decision gets harder is when keeping James impedes their ability to add players they'd view as long-term fits. If the Lakers plan their offseason around pursuing younger 2026 free agents on multi-year deals or acquiring such players through trade, paying James more than the cap room mid-level exception would become counterproductive. There is no point in doing free agency halfway. They have Reaves' artificially deflated cap hold here and now. Next year, he'll simply be making market value, so their path to cap space will basically mean clearing everyone else off the roster. So they're either building their team in full now, or they're waiting to do so in a year. Splitting your space between James and some free agent accomplishes little.

So James' Lakers fate hinges on the big-picture plan, and on his demands. A return of some sort seems likelier than, say, retiring or departing for another team, but it is far from a certainty.

What to do with Austin Reaves?

The Reaves situation,

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lakers-luka-doncic-austin-reaves-lebron-james-cap-space/)._