The Los Angeles Lakers will have a great opportunity to reshape their roster this summer and truly start to build a long-term core around Luka Doncic, especially if LeBron James leaves. A number of their players, including James, can or will become free agents, which could leave them with tens of millions of dollars of salary cap space.
Filling that cap space with impactful players won’t be easy, and Lakers fans don’t seem to have any real confidence that general manager Rob Pelinka will successfully do so. But Doncic appears to have a gravitational pull around the NBA, and according to Tim MacMahon of ESPN, there is at least one big man who will want to play for the Purple and Gold alongside Doncic.
“They have the fact they’re the Los Angeles Lakers and I can just tell you, big men will do back flips to be able to be in that Lakers uniform paired with Luka. I was talking to an agent who’s got a big man who may or may not be on the move and he would love to get his guy in L.A. Big men are going to want to play with Luka that much I can assure you.”
From just about the moment they acquired Doncic nearly a year ago, the Lakers started to look for the right starting center to pair him with. That led to the unsuccessful trade for Mark Williams in February and ultimately resulted in the signing of Deandre Ayton in July.
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Ayton hasn’t been bad for L.A., but fans are starting to feel dissatisfied with him. If the team looks to upgrade from Ayton, who can opt out of his contract at the end of this season, perhaps it will have at least one attractive option.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: MacMahon: Big men will want to play with Luka Doncic on Lakers