LeBron James, by all accounts, is about to play next season on a substantial discount. All the reporting on his decision to leave the Los Angeles Lakers and pursue free agency has indicated that his next decision will be driven not by money but by his happiness. His family is based in Los Angeles. He’s comfortable there. But the only team he has ruled out to this point in his free agency is the Lakers.
There are many reasons that might be the case, including eight years of pent-up grievances between the two sides. But according to ESPN’s Shams Charania on Wednesday, “LeBron James and the Lakers simply didn’t see eye to eye on what it meant to try to compete for a championship.” This more or less tracks with the statement agent Rich Paul released on James’ behalf last summer when he picked up his $52.6 million player option. “LeBron wants to compete for a championship,” Paul told ESPN a year ago. “He knows the Lakers are building for the future. He understands that, but he values a realistic chance of winning it all.”
James’ roster-building instincts are hardly infallible. He pushed for the Russell Westbrook trade, after all. But it feels notable that the self-proclaimed greatest player of all time, a 41-year-old who has won a championship on every team he has played for and is seemingly pursuing his fifth aggressively enough to take a substantial pay cut, got a whiff of Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka’s plans and seemingly thought to himself, “I don’t think that team can win a championship — even if I’m playing for them.”
On Wednesday, Pelinka’s vision for the Lakers came to fruition. They acquired long-rumored center target Walker Kessler in a stunningly expensive sign-and-trade that handed the Utah Jazz their unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, along with first-round pick swaps in 2028 and 2030.
Walker Kessler trade grades: Lakers get C+ in massive, albeit necessary, overpay; Jazz play it perfectly
Sam Quinn
Walker Kessler trade grades: Lakers get C+ in massive, albeit necessary, overpay; Jazz play it perfectly
After sending the Jazz their 2027 first-round pick to dump Westbrook back in 2023 and handing the Dallas Mavericks their 2029 first-round pick at the 2025 deadline, the Lakers have more or less exhausted their tradable draft capital. Only a first-round swap in 2032 is available. The cap space they’ve spent the past 18 months hoarding has been allocated. Joining Kessler in Los Angeles are guards Quentin Grimes and Collin Sexton and big man Sandro Mamukelashvili.
The roster isn’t done. They have two open roster spots and minimums to spend. They’ll have to shed a bit of money to squeeze in all of those signings. Maybe there are minor, player-based trades available to them. But this is functionally the team. The Lakers have used up their flexibility.
What do these additions bring to the Lakers?
So what exactly do they have? Oodles of shot-creation, for one. The Lakers have always placed a higher premium on basic points-per-game players than most teams. If nothing else, the additions of Sexton and Grimes offer enough supplemental offense that the Lakers won’t have to run Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves into the ground over the 82-game regular-season grind. Of course… similar logic arguably guided the decision to prioritize Kendrick Nunn and Talen Horton-Tucker over Alex Caruso after the 2020-21 season, and we saw what happened there. In fairness, no Caruso was known to be available to them this summer.
The Lakers have been a low 3-point volume shooting team basically since James arrived, and that has capped their offensive ceiling. JJ Redick, entering his third season as coach, finally has a roster that can let it fly. The ability to play five-out with Mamukelashvili at backup center is going to be torturous to guard. It is also going to create some track meets because Mamukelashvili emphatically cannot protect the rim as the lone big man in any lineup. His offense is still a plus at power forward, but that shooting goes from a superpower to a mere strength.
Kessler is inarguably a better fit at center than Mark Williams (whose trade to the Lakers in February 2025 was rescinded) would have been. This all-in center move nets the Lakers a meaningfully better player than their first attempt at such a trade would have. Of course, the Williams trade, for all of its warts, would have gotten the Lakers a center with a year-and-a-half of cheap team-control baked into his rookie deal, whereas Kessler is coming at market value. That deal would have preserved their 2033 first-round pick for future trades. This one obviously did not. Would you rather have had Williams alongside James 17 months ago, or Kessler without him now?
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