The Los Angeles Lakers may be trending up, but the future could be bleak if LeBron James leaves this summer.

HIGHLIGHTS

 The Los Angeles Lakers’ title hopes rely on LeBron James and Anthony Davis staying healthy.
 The Lakers are facing a potential roster overhaul if James leaves in free agency.
 The Lakers might consider tanking if James departs to rebuild with draft picks and young players.

So long as LeBron James and Anthony Davis are healthy, the Los Angeles Lakers can’t be counted out of the title discussion. The Western Conference is an absolute bloodbath right now, with the fifth and 10th seeds separated by just 4.5 games in the standings.

Los Angeles has been trending in the right direction but is still on the outside of the guaranteed playoff picture.

Last year showed the NBA world that the Play-In teams have to be taken seriously, however, with the Miami Heat making it all the way to Finals and the Lakers upsetting teams en route to the Western Conference Finals. Should L.A. find themselves back in the Play-In this year, there should be more optimism surrounding their title hopes as opposed to last season.

With James and Davis still operating like top-10 players on any given night, the Lakers do have a legitimate shot of winning it all this year, despite their lowly place in the standings. Unfortunately for the L.A. brass, their focus can’t be entirely on the current title chase, as they have huge looming question marks beyond this season.

This summer, James will have to decide whether to exercise his player option with the Lakers for the 2024-25 NBA season. Should he decline, he’ll become the most coveted free agent in recent league history and should have every team lining up to make their best pitch to try to bring his talents to their city. Some teams could even offer to draft his son, Bronny James out of the University of South California, to try to persuade him.

Should James actually leave in free agency, the Lakers will suddenly have a very different outlook for their near future.

GIVEMESPORT Key Statistic: When LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami in 2010, 9.95 million people tuned in to watch ‘The Decision.’

What Would the Lakers Look Like Without James?

The Lakers could have up to eight players leaving in free agency this summer.

LeBron James isn’t the only player who could leave the Lakers this summer. Several other players also hold a player option for next year: D’Angelo Russell, Christian Wood, Jaxson Hayes, and Cam Reddish. Aside from James and Russell, the three other players are easily replaceable, but there’s certainly a world in which L.A. finds itself scrambling to fill out its roster with viable bodies.

On top of their player options, the Lakers will also have Spencer Dinwiddie and Taurean Prince hitting unrestricted free agency after this season. For those wondering if L.A. could remain a competitive team even if LeBron James leaves, it’s highly unlikely.

Lakers players guaranteed through 2024-25 season

Player
Signed through
Contract AAV
Free agent type

Anthony Davis
2026-27
$37.98M
Player Option 2027-28

Rui Hachimura
2025-26
$17M
UFA 2026

Austin Reaves
2025-26

Gabe Vincent
2025-26
$11M
UFA 2026

Jarred Vanderbilt
2026-27
$4.37M
Player Option 2027-28

Jalen Hood-Schifino
2024-25
$4.47M
Team Option 2025-26 and 2026-27

Maxwell Lewis
2025-26
$1.91M
Team Option 2026-27

If James opts out of his final year, clearing over $51 million off of the Lakers books, L.A. would still be over the salary cap if Russell, Wood, Hayes, and Reddish all pick up their options. Even if all those players declined their options and the Lakers chose to let all of their incumbent free agents leave, they’d still only have around $10 million in cap space to build around a roster suddenly headlined by Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves, and Rui Hachimura.

Just two seasons ago, the Lakers failed to make the playoffs despite getting healthy seasons from both James and Davis. A team built around Davis and Reaves as their top two players is more likely to win the draft lottery than make any noise in the postseason. Unless James does the Lakers a massive favor by agreeing to a sign-and-trade this summer, there’s almost no scenario in which he leaves L.A. this offseason and the Lakers don’t immediately sink to the bottom of the standings.

So the Lakers can’t expect to be competitive without James. That doesn’t mean that they can’t turn things around quickly after his departure, right? They might not be able to retool very effectively via free agency, but there are always trades and the draft to try to return to contention.

Should the Lakers Tank if James Leaves?

The Lakers own all of their future first-round picks except for 2024 and 2027.

Los Angeles will have limited options to retool around Anthony Davis should James choose to leave in free agency. They won’t have the cap space to sign anyone of significance anytime soon, and the only trade assets they have outside of Davis and Reaves are their future first-round picks.

It was commonplace for James’s teams in the past to nearly empty their cupboard of future first-round selections to bring in veteran talent around their superstar. After all, James’s teams were always going to be drafting at the end of the first round, and any team with James leading the way wasn’t far off from title contention. Neither James nor his teams had the time or patience to wait for a rookie to develop into a meaningful contributor.

In his advanced age, though, the Lakers held firm, refusing to mortgage their future to go all in on the near-40-year-old. This was the right move, considering James’s hesitation to commit to L.A. long-term. Should he pick up his player option or re-sign with the Lakers, it’d make much more sense for them to offload their future picks than to try to build around him once again.

NBA Teams with the most projected practical cap space for 2024-25 season

Team
Projected practical cap space

Philadelphia 76ers
$76,818,078

Detroit Pistons
$75,565,955

Orlando Magic
$62,265,467

Utah Jazz
$54,904,423

Toronto Raptors
$43,401,483

Oklahoma City Thunder
$41,737,187

Charlotte Hornets
$40,135,665

Indiana Pacers
$36,361,527

San Antonio Spurs
$34,402,118

Washington Wizards
$22,350,947

But, if he leaves, L.A. now has the option to tank and build using the draft, something that the Cleveland Cavaliers and Miami Heat weren’t able to do. And tanking would be the right decision.

Anthony Davis may still be one of the 20 best basketball players on the planet, but he’s no spry chicken anymore. He’ll be 31 years old next season, and, with his injury history, probably won’t age very gracefully. Trying to maintain a competitive roster around Davis with their limited resources would be a mistake.

Instead, the Lakers could cash in on their best remaining trade chip by taking bids for Davis. In return, they could net some combination of promising young players and future draft capital from the highest bidder, rapidly advancing their rebuild post-LeBron James.

Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka has to have his eyes set on winning the title this season while James and Davis are still on the team and playing like superstars. Should they win it all, or even make a respectable run in the postseason, it’ll be a much easier sell to try to get James to stick around. But even in the worst-case scenario, at least the Lakers have a plan moving forward.