Nick Wright has slammed the LA Lakers during their offseason saga, as they pit LeBron James and Luka Doncic against each other.
The Lakers’ offseason has been a mess. What started as an opportunity to reconstruct their roster and attempt to contend for an NBA title with their two superstar players turned into a power struggle between James, who wants to compete now, and the Lakers, who don’t.
It started when the Lakers said to James they are targeting 2027’s offseason to bring in a big-name free agent and build around Doncic. That leaves 40-year-old James out of their plans.
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Since then, reports have hinted at tension between James and Doncic surrounding the direction of the franchise, with the Lakers favouring their new star over the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. But Wright believes that it has been manufactured by the Lakers.
Nick Wright says LeBron James and Luka Doncic saga is due to the LA Lakers’ ‘loser mentality’
Reports say the Lakers are attempting to navigate around one of the NBA’s all-time great players, who is unwilling to accept his current role as the second-best player on a team. That means the Lakers are willing to move on from James.
Wright, however, thinks this is merely an excuse for mismanagement. Speaking on the What’s Wright? with Nick Wright podcast, he said, “Is there a reason to believe that LeBron is not ok taking a secondary role in the organisation? Not from what I’ve seen.
“What I saw was, for four years, LeBron James begging Anthony Davis to take the car keys, and AD couldn’t quite do it or wasn’t willing to.”
Davis won the championship with James near the start of his Lakers tenure, but was never able to take the reins from James, who seemed keen to take a backseat in the latter stages of his career.
Wright continued, “Then, the Lakers trade for Luka. LeBron, wisely, does not ask Luka to change his game at all.
“LeBron changes his game massively and all of a sudden turns into maybe the Lakers’ best defensive player. He is far and away the Lakers’ best defensive player, and maybe their best overall player, in the postseason, and he greatly changes the way he’s playing, while doing nothing but supporting Luka.”
Before Doncic’s first game as a Laker, James had this message for his new teammate, “Luka, be your f——g self. Don’t fit in, fit the f–k out.” Those are not the words of someone clinging to their “best player on the team” status.
None of James’ actions show an unwillingness to play second fiddle to Doncic. Additionally, reports that the Lakers were targeting the summer of 2027 only came out after the Lakers missed out on the first wave of free agents to start the summer.
It all just sounds like a retroactive excuse, and one that is tearing the team apart.
Wright concluded, “The Lakers are saying, ‘We just don’t think we can compete with these guys.’ I think that is a loser mentality.
“Personally, if I were trying to win NBA championships, I’d love to have two top-ten players on my team. It doesn’t feel like the Lakers share the same sentiment.”
Nick Wright thinks Luka Doncic is less likely to re-sign with the LA Lakers
A shadow cast over all of the Lakers’ drama is whether Doncic will re-sign with LA next summer.
That seemed overwhelmingly likely at the end of the season, but the Lakers didn’t re-sign Doncic’s friend, Dorian Finney-Smith, upsetting him in the process, and this LeBron James mess cannot be leaving a good impression on the Slovenian.
Wright said that he feels less confident that Doncic will re-sign with the team after this offseason.
He said, “I think the way the Lakers screwed up the Dorian Finney-Smith thing is potentially troubling. And the way the Lakers are not so subtly dissing LeBron James, I can’t imagine Luka is happy with that.
“The Dorian Finney-Smith thing really matters because of his relationship with Luka, and the team gets a touch worse. I would have said it’s 95% that Luka would re-sign this summer. I will not say that it’s 75%.”
All of this drama stemmed from the Lakers declaring publicly that the James era in LA was over, and the Doncic one had begun. If they lose James and Doncic because of that, it will be a disaster on a scale we have never seen in the NBA.