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The Los Angeles Lakers are looking to get back into championship contention and have built a roster around superstar Luka Doncic that they believe gets them closer to that goal. Doncic has made it to the NBA Finals before, leading the Dallas Mavericks there in 2024, though they would fall in five games to the Boston Celtics. There are some who question this Lakers roster and whether it can compete at the highest level with the best teams in the league. But NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley believes this Lakers team is just as good as the Mavericks squad Doncic led to the Finals.
“I really want to see the Lakers do well,” Barkley said on the Bill Simmons podcast. “First of all, I’m a big Luka fan, a big Austin Reaves fan. I think they’re gonna be better than people realize. Luka and Kyrie took the Mavs to the Finals, come on, man. This team is probably better; this team is probably just as good as that team.”
Barnes cracked a smile as he was joking about the Lakers team and then went on to praise them for building around Luka Dončić. “But again, man, when you’ve got Luka and AR [Austin Reaves] out there, to me two of the best scoring guards in the league. They added some depth,” Barnes said. “To me, I just got to see it. Everyone wants to give a hot take and predict what they feel like they’re gonna do.”
Law Murray: Covering LeBron James last season, he had an internal conflict going on with how much he had to defer to Austin Reaves (even Bron understood that Luka was the top dawg in any circumstance). Bron was very pleased with being able to still be the lead option in a postseason setting, particularly a winning one against the Rockets. But he's still on the other side of 40. I don't look at him like a traditional point guard, and he surely won't be guarding point guards. The ball is still going to be brought up primarily by Tyrese Maxey, but Maxey already is used to sharing the rock and being effective off of other ball-dominant players. He started his career with Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. He worked with James Harden for two seasons. Even last year, VJ Edgecombe got touches as a rookie. So Maxey will be sharing playmaking duties with James, without James having to ever over-handle the basketball. It should help everyone in that offense, especially Jaylen Brown, get to a point where they are all efficient and get the ball in places where they can maximize damage. I don't think it happens overnight, but if they get enough games together in the regular season, then Philadelphia's offense has a vast ceiling in the spring.
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NBA superstar LeBron James may have left the Los Angeles Lakers’ organization in the rearview, but he’s still hanging out with his former teammates. James spent time with Austin Reaves at a golf course Sunday along with his son, Bronny James. The trio were filmed having a meal together with Bobby Fairways, Joey Coldcuts, Fat Perez, and Binny the Jet from the Bob Does Sports YouTube channel.
Tim McMahon: "What they were trying to do was put a long-term core in place around Luka and Austin Reaves, and to do that, you couldn't have LeBron making a bunch of money. Now, why didn't LeBron take the minimum from the Lakers? That's a whole different story. Point being, I understand why they were prepared to move on from LeBron, okay? Because it's their future is more important than LeBron right now, but LeBron was a massive contributor to that team last year."
Austin Reaves is looking forward to attending the Los Angeles Lakers' upcoming minicamp in Slovenia, where he is specifically aiming to beat the most out of Luka Doncic in golf. But more than that, he is certainly steadfast in meeting the team's new faces and building important camaraderie to start early for the 2026-27 NBA season. "I feel great, I'm going to kick his a** in golf," Reaves jokingly said in a media availability for his ongoing 2026 Rigorer Basketball Camp, via 852 Sports Entertainment. "That'll be a lot of fun, but it'll just be good to get around everybody. We've got a fairly new team, a lot of new guys. So it'll just be good to be around them, learn to get to know one another off the court. Just build that chemistry there."
“AR had a fantastic season last year, well-deserving of the contract he got and everything,” Grimes said on 710 AM ESPN L.A. with Mason & Ireland. “He’s one of the best scorers in the NBA, probably. Walker (Kessler), you know, is one of the best rim protectors. I know he only played like four or five games last year, but everybody knows what he does. Nobody wants to go in that paint, 7’2” guy he’s going to block shots. He’s going to give us a definite advantage because people aren’t gonna go in that paint, so we can guard and put pressure on the ball even more knowing we got big Walker down in the paint holding it down. “We got guys like Collin (Sexton), a dog. (Sandro) Mamu, a dog, already getting out here and getting work in. So, it’s going to be a lot of fun. I feel like we’re going to surprise some people for sure with how good we are and clicking on all cylinders, I think.”
No matter where LeBron decides to go, it would be seen as him chasing rings, since almost every team in the league already has stars. "Where does Charles and the legends want LeBron to go? Do they want him to go to the G League? Because if he went to Cleveland, is that team stacked? Is Miami with Bam Adebayo and Giannis Antetokounmpo is that team stacked? Jokic and Jamal Murray is that team stacked? Ant Edwards, Rudy Gobert I don’t know; he left Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves is that not? I don’t understand the premise of the complaint," Windhorst said in response.
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Those close to James say they believe him when he said in his statement that he thought he "was done when the season ended." But as he decompressed and evaluated where he was in his life and career, the feeling of leading a team and winning the way he'd done in the Los Angeles Lakers' surprising first-round upset of the Houston Rockets while Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves were injured, stuck with him. "I think he just realized he had a lot of meaningful basketball left in him," is how one source close to James put it.
LeBron James did indeed contemplate retirement after the Lakers were swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round. But he felt “incomplete,” the source said, in assessing the season. He’d been incredible in L.A.’s first-round upset of the Houston Rockets, playing without Luka Dončić for the whole series and with Austin Reaves for just 64 total minutes in six games. But James also saw that he’d been able to be a supporting cast member in the regular season, when Dončić was healthy and at his best, and Reaves became a dependable second scoring option.
Austin Reaves: Be true to yourself Reaves is a guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. After going undrafted out of Oklahoma, he signed a new contract this offseason. Reaves: LeBron James told me that my rookie year. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t like going out. I stay in the house, and that was the first thing he told me. He was like, “Don’t try to fit in with anybody that you’re not. If you want to do something, do it. If not, do what you like to do.” I felt like a weight off my shoulders because I could just be myself every day instead of trying to act like somebody else. It’s not even necessarily anything to do with basketball or sports. I think it’s just life in general. Be yourself and be a good person, and at the end of the day, good things will happen.”
The largest proposed deal was $230 million over five years. Two executives considered $200 million over five years to be fair. The two other five-year deals were for $190 million and $180 million. The person who suggested the $190 million contract referenced the Pistons’ other priorities from earlier in the summer, when they were reportedly preparing to offer guard Austin Reaves a four-year, $177 million contract before he re-upped with the Los Angeles Lakers. “If they were willing to give a max to Reaves, then they should be willing to do five years, $190 million for a younger player who made All-NBA at a more valuable position,” the respondent said.
