Next for Luka Dončić? The Lakers star has a decision to make.
Luka Dončić thought he would spend the rest of his career with the Dallas Mavericks; that, as he was (and we were) stunned to learn back in February, won’t happen. What comes next, now that the Los Angeles Lakers team that traded for the Slovenian superstar has been eliminated from the 2025 NBA playoffs, is Dončić figuring out what Plan B for his future will look like — a process that starts with some contractual decisions.
A 26-year-old, five-time All-Star and All-NBA First Team selection, Dončić is on the Lakers’ books for just under $46 million next season, and holds a player option for nearly $49 million in the 2026-27 campaign. And on Aug. 2, six months from the date of his league-rattling trade to the Lakers, he will become eligible for an extension of his current contract — one that could cement him as the next signature superstar to carry the NBA’s preeminent glamour franchise into the next decade.
Dončić — who averaged 28.2 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.5 assists per regular-season game as a Laker, and 30.2 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game during L.A.’s five-game defeat at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves — said after the Lakers’ elimination that he’d been too wrapped up in a whirlwind the last three months to give much attention to the prospect of opening up extension talks with his new employers.
“I didn’t think about it yet,” he told reporters after the Game 5 loss to the Wolves. “I’ve been focused on basketball. So obviously, this is the time now to think about everything.”
Whether or not Dončić has been thinking about it, it’s pretty safe to assume that both Dončić’s agent, WME’s Bill Duffy, and Lakers president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka have been mulling it over for months — even dating back to before the blockbuster deal to extract him from Dallas was consummated. Jovan Buha and Sam Amick of The Athletic reported that Dončić’s “uncertain long-term status was the primary reason the Lakers were able to avoid giving up their 2031 first-round pick in the deal” that brought him to Los Angeles, and that the Lakers “will be amenable to whatever contract structure Dončić desires.”
The potentially-more-than-half-a-billion-dollar question: What structure is that, exactly?
This much we know for sure: It won’t be the projected five-year, $345.3 million deal that Dončić could have signed in Dallas. The collective bargaining agreement between the NBA’s teams and the league’s players union stipulates that the designated veteran player extension (DVPE) — colloquially known as the supermax — can only be offered to a player by either the team that drafted him, or a team that acquired him while he was still on his rookie-scale contract. Since Dončić, the third pick in the 2018 NBA draft, cycled off of his initial pact back in 2022, the DVPE is off the table.
What can be on the table, come Aug. 2, is an extension that starts at 30% of the salary cap, with 8% raises, that can tack up to an extra four years onto his existing contract. With current projections placing the 2026-27 salary cap at just over $170.1 million, Dončić could earn a maximum of just over $228.6 million through the end of the 2029-30 NBA season — about $38.1 million less than he could’ve made over those four seasons in Dallas, and nearly $117 million less than the total value of the five-year supermax.
That’s not the only option available, though.
Dončić could also play out next season, exercise his 2026-27 opt-out to enter unrestricted free agency, and then sign a new deal with the Lakers that could pay him $296 million over a five-year stretch, ending in 2030-31. That’s an awfully hefty chunk of change; it’s also still below what he would’ve been eligible for in Dallas, and a payday that he’d have to wait a year to lock in.
Another option for narrowing the gap in total compensation: Dončić, who just completed his seventh NBA season, could sign a shorter-term deal with the Lakers now — one that allows him to dip back into free agency in the summer of 2028. That’s when he will have reached 10 years of
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