Winners and Losers of Luka Dončić’s Extension: What It Means for LeBron, Lakers, and Rest of NBA! 👀🏀

Winners and Losers of Luka Dončić’s Extension: What It Means for LeBron, Lakers, and Rest of NBA! 👀🏀

We’ve got breaking news in the NBA. The Los Angeles Lakers and star Luca Donic have agreed to a contract extension that is reportedly three years and $165 million with a player option for 2028. He was eligible for as much as 4 years and 222 million. But once this three-year deal expires, he could sign a 5-year supermax with the Lakers. Donic would have been eligible for a 5year $346 million super max if the Mavericks had kept him. instead they sent him to LA and historic and stunning blockbuster trade 6 months ago. CBS Sports NBA reporter Sam Quinn is joining us now. Sam, first your instant reaction to this big breaking news in the NBA. You know, it’s not terribly surprising the structure, I think, was the only bit of news that we were really waiting on. Was it going to be the four the full four years where he takes as much money as he can guarantee himself right now? or was he going to be a little bit more strategic in the structure? That’s ultimately what he did. He signs the two plus one. He guarantees himself 165 million right now, but he also sets himself up to become a free agent after year 10 where he can cash in on that 35% super max. It makes all the sense in the world, right? If he was unhappy, we probably would have heard about it sooner. It seemed like from the moment he got in LA, it was a good match. They obviously lose in the first round, but it was a successful regular season. They have a good plan moving forward to get him a co-star. So, this makes sense. This is one of the best players in the NBA, uniting with the biggest brand in the sport for several years moving forward. Let’s talk winners and losers uh on this deal here. Uh and let’s go with Luca right off the bat. Why is he a winner here? Well, he gets to be the face of the Lakers, right? If you look through NBA history, that’s a pretty coveted position. You start George Mike and then it’s a pretty straight shot all the way through NBA history where outside of a few speed bumps they’ve pretty much always had one of the best players in the league goes to Algen Baylor to Jerry West to Kareem Abdul Jabbar to Magic Johnson to Shaq to Kobe up through LeBron basically all throughout NBA history if you’re the best player on the Lakers odds are you’re going to be winning MVPs winning championships you’re living in Los Angeles it’s very desirable he’s locked himself up there for another few years He’s under contract for at least three with the Lakers now and he’s done that to become the face of the most iconic franchise in the NBA. Right now, there are still questions about what the team is going to do moving forward, but it’s the Lakers, right? Every time they get a star, they get a second to join him. They get LeBron, they trade for Anthony Davis, they get uh they they sign Shaq as a free agent, then they draft Kobe, etc., etc. He should feel relatively comfortable that in Los Angeles, he’s going to have a chance not only to win championships, but to become an NBA icon with the franchise that’s been producing icons for 80 years now. So, the laundry list as to why Luke is a big winner here is pretty obvious. And again, it’s a laundry list. There’s a lot of reasons why, but in your mind, is there a little bit that he’s actually kind of a loser in this deal because of what happened with Dallas? Yeah, if he had stayed in Dallas, he would have been able to sign a supermax five years. The projection right now would be around $336 million. Obviously, he loses some money in this arrangement through no fault of his own, right? The supermax um the rules are set up so that you can only sign it with either the team that drafted you or a team that traded for you in your first four years situation like Shay Gilda Alexander or Tyrese Hallebertton. He didn’t ask for this trade, right? He didn’t force it. That’s what the supermax rules were designed to discourage. They don’t want you forcing a move to a desirable team and then also getting paid on top of it. He was traded in the dead and night. He had no control over this. He wanted to stay with Dallas. So even though he does get to a desirable situation in Los Angeles, it’s not like he got traded to the Wizards. It’s not like he got traded to the Hornets, but still he loses out on quite a bit of money because of a trade that he didn’t engineer. So in that sense, yeah, he did miss out on a little bit here. He’s not going to get quite as much as he would have with Dallas. So, in a in a small sense, he is something of a loser here. Yeah. H that that money is gonna going to come eventually. He will make it. But for the sake of the conversation we’re having, winning and losing at the same time, but yet still coming out on top. Uh speaking of winners, the Lakers big winners in this, right? Oh, absolutely. Right. They traded for him with only one and a half guaranteed years left on his contract. And because he didn’t force that trade, you kind of had to be a little bit on edge, right? They had six months basically to prove to him, hey, Los Angeles is where you should spend at least the next several years, if not the entire rest of your prime. They lose in the first round. They have all of this drama with LeBron this off season. He would have been justified if he would have said, “Hey, I’m a little bit skeptical. I’m going to play this out until free agency.” or hey maybe there’s some other team that I’d want to play with at least you know before San Antonio signs Fox there would have been some pretty you know desirable destinations out there in free agency for him next year if he’d wanted to go compete for championships as his first priority he might have been able to handp pick a better situation but ultimately the Lakers secure the signature as they so often do it’s very very rare when NBA players will say no to the Los Angeles Lakers and now that they have him locked up. They can focus on getting star number two. If they’re going to go out recruiting, they don’t have to worry about guys saying, “hm, I’m interested, but you know, Luca’s not locked up. I’m not sure. Do I want to come there and risk him leaving?” That’s not really on the table now. So, you look forward to free agency a few years from now, 2027, at least right now. Giannis Antenna Kmpo and Nicole Yokic are both slated to become free agents. That could change through an extension. that can exchange through a trade. But for the moment, both of them set to become free agents in two offseasons. Luca will be there and he will be ready to recruit them. Yeah. 2026, a lot of teams had that circled as a potential time where maybe they could get in on the Luca sweep stake. So, who right now after seeing this deal is kind of kicking themselves because they know they probably have to go back to the drawing board for next year. Well, the short answer is every team in the league, right? If if you had any designs on cap space whatsoever, Luca was the player that you wanted to use them on. I think San Antonio with the Fox situation coming had probably more or less moved on. They weren’t going to preserve their cap space. They were going to sign him. The two teams that I look at as the really logical cap space teams were the Clippers, ironically sharing a city with the Lakers and the Heat, both of whom have preserved their cap space for next off season and both of whom need a long-term franchise player. Right. The Clippers have Kawhi Leonard and James Harden as all-stars, but those guys are both older. Kawhai has his injury issues. Miami is sort of in the desert right now. They’re waiting after trading Jimmy Butler. How are they going to find their next franchise player? I’m sure they would have loved to pitch Luca Donuch, but alas, those teams are going to have to go back to the drawing board and say, is there another free agent in 2026 that we like? The answer is probably not. At least not on that level. Jiren Jackson Jr. is resigned. Darren Fox expected to resign. Could you maybe chase say Trey Young? Ironically, you look at the Laker roster. Could you maybe chase LeBron? But there isn’t another Luca. There isn’t another guaranteed MVP candidate kind of player out there. The Lakers locked the last one up. You brought up LeBron. We haven’t really talked about him a whole lot in this situation with the breaking news, but if you have your win column and loss column, where do you put LeBron in this conversation? You know, interestingly, this is not the sort of extension historically that LeBron has ever been willing to sign. Usually, at least at his peak, especially when he was in Cleveland that second time around, LeBron would sign these short-term deals, these one-year, two-year deals, and he would do that to exert maximum leverage over his teams. Luca theoretically could have done the same thing. Say Luca was unhappy with the state of the Lakers. He could have gone to them and said, “I’m not going to resign. I want you to prove to me that you’re capable of building a championship team around me. Then they would have had to start throwing draft picks around in trades. They would have to start giving out multi-year deals, not preserving cap space. That’s exactly what LeBron wants them to do. LeBron doesn’t want to think about 2027 free agency. LeBron will probably be retired by then. He wants them to go allin, but Luca signing this extension here and now basically pre precludes that. That’s Lucas saying to the Lakers, “I trust you. I’m willing to give you the time you need to put the right team around me.” LeBron doesn’t want to give them that time. LeBron wants them to win now. Based on Luca signing this extension at this point, it seems like they’re not going to go allin quite yet. They’re going to wait this thing out, try to do it slow and do it right. Sam Quinn, thank you so much. Again, breaking news here on HQ. Luca Donic signing that extension with the Lakers. Going to keep him there a little bit longer. Again, here are the odds to win the NBA Finals heading in to next season. The Thunder, the defending champs, at plus 230 to get it done. We’re going to have Ashley Nicole Moss jump on with us next uh to break down the big news here from La La Land that Donic ain’t going anywhere, at least not for a few years. The Los Angeles Lakers and star Luca Donic have agreed to a contract extension that is reportedly worth three years, $165 million with a player option for 2028. He was eligible for as much as four years and 222 million. But once this three-year deal expires, he could sign a 5-year supermax with the Lakers. Let’s go ahead and bring in Ashley Nicole Moss for reaction on this big news out of the NBA. And Ashley, first your reaction and what do we expect from Luke in his first full season LA now that he’s got this long-term deal? Um, the reaction really isn’t surprising to me or I don’t have a surprising reaction, I should say. I think we all expected this to happen when the trade went down. That was mindblowing. It rocked the NBA world, the sports world in general. But you don’t trade for a player like Luca and then allow him to enter free agency next summer. You lock him in. Now, the unfortunate reality of this situation is that his number would look more like $340 million if he were still a Dallas Maverick. So, if you’re Luca Yes. uh the money he recently signed for, he just signed for $165 million, is still a whole lot of cash. Let’s make that very clear. But it’s definitely not the super max, which if you’re Luca and his team, you probably got over that a lot sooner than we did, uh knowing that information. But um I think look, this is what the Lakers needed to do because the elephant in the room is the future of LeBron James. Does he stay a Laker? Does he take his talents elsewhere? Does he ultimately retire? And whatever those scenarios are, the future of this Los Angeles Lakers franchise is in the hands of Luca. So, you have to go ahead and lock down the next superstar of this new iteration of the Los Angeles Lakers. Yeah, thinking ahead there in LA. Now, Luca, this isn’t the only headline he’s sort of made here the last few days. Presumably, he’s now in shape, gracing the cover of Men’s Health. Is this a new look for Luca heading in to next year? Yeah, Luka looks good. Look, Luca is like that guy who or I’ll just say I’ll make this very general. If you’ve ever broken up with someone or been broken up with and you wanted to get revenge on your ex and you pop out looking better than you ever did when you were with them, this is exactly the mindset that Luca has. He took those fat jokes. He took the the body shaming, all the things that the Dallas Mavericks did um and sprinkled into the media during this breakup. Very, very personal. And look, Luca always had to get in better shape. It shouldn’t have been a an issue in Dallas. Some people may say, “Well, if you were able to do this, how come you didn’t do it when you were a Dallas Maverick?” Sometimes it just takes the right person to bring the right energy out of you. and he’s in sunny Los Angeles. The green juices are flowing. The Pilates mats are in everybody’s hands. The sun is shining. And maybe he wanted to get his Hollywood body intact for uh the Lake Show. But this is great. I mean, Luca is going into a season this next season with a new found confidence because of how he looks, a newfound determination to probably prove a lot of people wrong when it comes to the type of player that he can be. prove a lot of people wrong when it comes to the dedication he has to his nutrition, to his body, and whatever the flip was for him. I’m being facitious when I say it was the Dallas Mavericks and all that body shaming, it very much could be part of that, but whatever the ultimate switch was for him. Maybe it was being around LeBron James, who we all know takes his body extremely extremely seriously, it’s the reason why he’s been able to play as long as he has in this league. Whatever that switch was for Luca, it’s going to work wonders for him because he’s already a immense talent. He just needed to work on some things on the margins. Now, if Luca comes back skinny, rich, and playing defense, it’s over for the NBA. I’m telling you that much. I I I like that you brought up the LeBron thing for sure because look, man, good good players rub off on each other. If you can learn something from one of the games greatest, that’s not a bad thing. But as we talk about LeBron, what does this deal mean for him? Um, you know, I think LeBron, much like all of us, knew that this was going to happen, right? I I don’t think that this is going to be a surprise to anybody who’s been watching basketball, anybody in the media and anybody within the Los Angeles organization. But I will say this, you wonder if Luca coming back this after this off seasonason going into next season with a new found dedication to his craft is more intriguing to LeBron than maybe it was prior to this off season. I’m not saying there was any contention between the two of them, but when you see a player really take this off season by the horns and completely change the type of player that a lot of people are expecting to return in September for training camp, it changes your mindset a little bit. And I understand that LeBron James wants to win. I have a belief that there are only a few teams that he would really be able to go to that are in championship uh contender categories. And I wonder if those teams would be willing to even make the move for LeBron James because they’re already championship contenders. I think that LeBron remains a Los Angeles Laker until he retires. And I think that Luca maybe got a feeling that there was some contention between LeBron and the front office or LeBron’s belief in this Los Angeles Lakers um system and wanted to not only do his part as an individual athlete, but as a teammate of LeBron James. And if you’re LeBron, wherever you are in the world, and you’re seeing how uh Luca is attacking this off season, you got to feel good going into this next season with that guy as your teammate. Yeah, no doubt. Um you mentioned earlier the kind of the passing of the torch the Lakers can do from superstar to superstar net looks like what they’re doing here. But how does this deal affect how the Lakers will try to build around him in the future and maybe one day when LeBron is is no longer there? LeBron no longer being there is really the key to helping the Lakers build, right? We all know how much money and rightfully so LeBron costs. It’s $55 million. And with that money being tied up in a player who’s going to be 41 years old, it gives doesn’t give you much wiggle room to bring in players that you want to surround your new superstar with and build a team that he can win with, not just in the immediate future, but for the long term. And I think that’s something the Lakers have kind of struggled with in the past few seasons of LeBron James. It’s bringing in a bunch of players that they think would be an immediate fix for what LeBron ultimately wants, and that’s to win a championship. And as we have seen throughout the league, that’s just not the formula to winning championships. It’s homegrown. It’s bringing in the right players, allowing those players to gel together, to develop a chemistry, bringing in the right coach, allowing that coach to have ample time with that team to make a championship team. We saw that with the Oklahoma City Thunder this past season, the season before that, we saw that with the Boston Celtics. I mean, the list goes on and on. And in order for the Lakers to get back to the championship days that their fans desperately want, they have to get back to building a team that can last and not a team that’s just seasonal. And the unfortunate reality for that, a lot of that possibility lies in LeBron James. So, it’s going to be really interesting ultimately what he does or what the Lakers decide they’re going to do with LeBron James this particular season because again, a lot of that wiggle room to make something happen for this team, especially with this new superstar, Luca, at the forefront lies in LeBron and what he ultimately decides he wants to do. Let’s play that game here. If and when LeBron moves on, who can be that sidekick for Luca? I know everybody’s going to want me to say Giannis because, you know, why not? Luca and Giannis, but I don’t know if it necessarily has to be a another Luca level superstar. We don’t know what the next next free agency or the free agency in 2027, I believe, is going to be absolute insanity. Um, the CBA has changed what the NBA is going to look like and how free agency is going to look like and there’s a lot more money that is is just around the corner with these new media rights deals. But I’m under the belief like this. I don’t know if you necessarily if the NBA necessarily is in the stage where you need two, three superstars on the same team. And when I say superstars, I mean immediate superstars. Some people will say get Giannis and Luca together. But if we look at a team like Oklahoma City for example, I think it’s very clear to say, it’s very fair to say rather that it’s SGA and then there’s a tier after that and then it’s JDub and then it’s Hart and Stein and then it’s Chad. And I think it’s okay to have one head of a snake, one head of the snake rather, and then a nice flow after that. So, I say all that to say I don’t necessarily think the Lakers need to go star hunting. I just think they need to build a strong team that highlights Luca’s strengths and also minimizes his weaknesses. You want to bring a defensive guy in there. You want to bring another three-point shooter in there, but it doesn’t have to necessarily be a perennial superstar allstar. And I hope that the Lakers have learned from previous mistakes and have also seen how the league has changed and the teams that have won championships and maybe take a page out of that book. All right, now that the deal is done and we have, you know, new post breakup Luca uh on the cover of Men’s Health, how does this Lakers team now stack up in the Western Conference? You know, I’m still not in love with this team the way that I am with some of the other teams in the Western Conference. When you talk about the Rockets, when you talk about the Nuggets, when you even talk about the Clippers, you can never keep the Warriors out of the conversation. But I will say this, I I was a little bit um more apprehensive about saying that this would be a playoff team. I think that I’m still keeping them in the fringe of a playin team until I see some more um until I see them actually take the court together in preeason and early in the season. Um but I will say this, when you have Luca come in in impeccable shape, when you have LeBron James coming back, obviously they brought in DeAndre Aton, I don’t think he’s a drastic needle mover, but they did need a center position. They need a player at a the center position to not only help with defense, to help with size, but also to help Luca maximize what he does really well. I’m gearing towards a little bit being more of a believer that at most this would be a six seed. This is still for me not a championship contender team. I think there are so many other teams in the Western Conference that I’m putting before the Los Angeles Lakers. Ashley Nicole Moss. Great stuff here on a Saturday with the breaking news that Luca staying in LA for at least a little while longer. Appreciate you joining us. You can catch Ashley of course on Triple Threat. Watch now on YouTube or using that QR code on your screen. You could also catch Triple Threat on the CBS Sports Network.

Sam Quinn and Ashley Nicole Moss joins CBS Sports HQ to discuss the winners and losers of Luka Dončić’s extension with the Lakers.

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