The NBA offseason gets into full swing on Monday at 3:00 p.m. PT when free agency opens and teams can begin negotiating new contracts with players. But there are a couple of big decisions to be made before that, and one of those involves LeBron James for the Los Angeles Lakers.
James has a player option worth $52.6 million for the 2025-26 season. It’s the same contract decision LeBron has had for a couple seasons now, but in previous years there was never a doubt that he would decline the option, become an unrestricted free agent and re-sign with the Lakers on a new contract.
This offseason, though, there existed a belief that James could simply pick up his player option and play the next season on a true expiring contract, something he has not yet done as a member of the Lakers. This could be because he’s getting closer to considering retirement, or because he wants to keep his options open in a 2026 free agent market that has a little bit more available money.
Either way, that rumored belief got even stronger on Saturday, as Dave McMenamin of ESPN reported that James is expected to pick up the player option:
The only mechanism the Lakers are projected to have in free agency is the taxpayer midlevel exception, worth $5.7 million, because James is expected to pick up the final year of his contract for $52.6 million, sources told ESPN.
As previously stated, the top thing this could suggest is that James may be heading towards retirement in the summer of 2026. However, McMenamin does not believe that to be the case:
And while James has considered retirement every offseason since 2023, a source familiar with James’ thinking told ESPN that at this point, James is not entering next season with any certainty that it will be his last.
The $52.6 million that James would be agreeing to pick up is not his maximum contract. He could have opted out and demanded a full max, something the Lakers would have almost certainly paid. So perhaps he is doing the same thing he did last summer, which is giving L.A. some breathing room under the second apron to use their full taxpayer mid-level exception and land some minimum contracts.
Regardless of what his motivations are, it appears the Lakers will have LeBron back on a truly expiring $52.6 million contract in 2025-26.
Lakers have interest in long-term partnership with Austin Reaves
With LeBron James picking up his player option, that pushes any decision-making regarding his contract to the 2026 summer, when he’ll be a free agent. The Lakers will also have to make a decision regarding Austin Reaves next summer, as he has declined his maximum extension offer and will enter unrestricted free agency as well in 2026.
But it appears the team and Reaves have mutual interest in a long-term deal.
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