Ramona Shelburne The Lakers have also in recent trade conversations that shown an unwillingness to add salary beyond this year because they're trying to preserve as much space for next year You have to give the Lakers a reason to do it

Shelburne The Lakers Had A Meeting Last Summer With Luka Doncic That Mapped Out The 2026 Offseason LeBron James wasnt In Those Plans At that meeting they laid out their plans in those plans they did not include LeBron James

Windhorst The Los Angeles Lakers would be very open to the prospect of trading LeBron James for Jarrett Allen

Charania The Lakers have made it clear that they want him back but the one thing I do know is that multiple contenders are already circling If LeBron is really going to hit the open market and decide and have a true free agency he's not going to have a shortage of teams

Charania I'm told over the last 24-48 hours the Lakers came to the understanding that Austin Reaves had multiple max contracts available to him in free agency The Detroit Pistons were coming aggressively for him So that's why today the Lakers stepped up to give him this deal

Charania If you are a NBA team that has contending aspirations LeBron James according to my sources it is not a financially driven decision That means if you want to slot him in if you want to pitch him on a minimum pitch him on an exception pitch him on a non-max contract

Fischer Last Tuesday I said that there were many people around the league who thought that LeBron should take a veteran minimum salary It does not sound like that is actually in the cards at all I wanna be very very clear about that after some text messages and phone calls I received