We recently went over all of LeBron James’ contract options in free agency and how that would impact which teams he’d be able to sign with.
But what if he wants to stay with the Lakers?
The franchise will have full Bird rights on LeBron, so they can sign him to anything up to a max contract. However, he might not have long to make his decision. He’ll have a $57.75 million cap hold on the Lakers’ books until they either re-sign him, sign-and-trade him elsewhere or renounce their free-agent rights on him entirely.
In other words: The Lakers’ offseason starts with reaching a decision on LeBron either way. They will not have a single dollar of cap space until they do that.
So, let’s explore what all of his different contract options would mean for the Lakers’ free-agency outlook.
Max contract
If LeBron wants a max deal, the Lakers can give him one, even though that would take them back over the cap. That’s the power of having LeBron’s full Bird rights.
However, that would also take them out of the running for other marquee free agents.
LeBron’s max salary next year is the same as his cap hit, $57.75 million. He and Luka Dončić alone would be earning $107.25 million. Add in Jarred Vanderbilt ($12.4 million), Jake LaRavia ($6.0 million), Dalton Knecht ($4.2 million), the No. 25 pick ($3.2 million), Adou Thiero ($2.1 million) and the guaranteed $1.26 million portion of Bronny James’ salary in 2026-27, and the Lakers would already be up to nearly $136.5 million.
That’s before factoring in the possibility of Deandre Ayton ($8.1 million) and Marcus Smart ($5.4 million) picking up their respective player options or Austin Reaves’ $20.9 million cap hit. Add those into the picture, and they’d already be over the cap after re-signing LeBron.
If the Lakers decided to operate as an over-the-cap team this offseason, they could have access to the $15 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception as long as they stayed below the first apron. But using it would trigger a first-apron hard cap, which could complicate their ability to re-sign Reaves, Rui Hachimura and/or any of their other free agents.
Otherwise, if they re-sign James and opt to use cap space, they’ll have only the $9.4 million room mid-level exception at their disposal. (More on that later.)
Below max, above NTMLE
If LeBron wants more than the non-taxpayer MLE but is willing to take less than a max, the Lakers could meet him anywhere in the middle.
With just Luka, Vando, LaRavia, Knecht, the No. 25 pick, Thiero, the guaranteed portion of Bronny’s salary and Reaves’ cap hold on their books, the Lakers would be at $99.6 million in guaranteed salary. If they somehow convinced Ayton and Smart to decline their respective player options, they could have upward of $60 million in spending power. Granted, that would require them to renounce the rights to everyone, including LeBron, Rui and Luke Kennard. That isn’t likely to happen.
If the Lakers signed LeBron to a deal in the $25-30 million range, they still wouldn’t have any cap space once factoring in cap holds for Hachimura ($27.4 million), Kennard ($13.2 million) and Jaxson Hayes ($6.6 million). They’d have to renounce all of them to have significant cap space.
So, the TL;DR version: If the Lakers re-sign LeBron to something more than the non-taxpayer MLE, they aren’t likely to have cap space this summer.
NTMLE
If LeBron is willing to settle for the non-taxpayer MLE, that could open up more options for the Lakers.
The Lakers could go about that one of two ways. They could operate as an over-the-cap team and use their actual non-taxpayer MLE on LeBron, or they could just give him an equivalent amount with his Bird rights.
If they went the Bird rights route, they’d then have either the room MLE or non-taxpayer MLE to spend on another free agent, depending on whether they dipped below the cap or stayed above it.
This is the contractual range where it starts to make sense for the Lakers to bring LeBron back. If they lost Rui and Kennard in free agency, they still could have significant spending power to bring in other free agents before they turned their attention to re-signing Reaves.
Room exception
Unless LeBron is willing to take a minimum deal, this would be the Lakers’ dream scenario.
They would renounce their rights to LeBron at the start of free agency, spend all of their cap space and then re-sign him using the $9.4 million room MLE. This would not impact their free-agent plans whatsoever since his $57.75 million cap hold would be off their books.
If the Lakers also renounced their rights to Hachimura, Kennard and the rest of their free agents, they could have upward of $50 million in spending power to round out their roster around Luka and Reaves before re-signing LeBron with the room MLE.
The only question is whether LeBron is willing to settle for that amount when other contenders (including the Spurs) would be able to offer more via the non-tax MLE.
Min deal
If LeBron doesn’t care about money at this stage of his career and only wants to maximize his chances of winning a championship, he should take a minimum contract this offseason, whether with the Lakers or another team.
Teams get a special salary-cap exception to sign players to minimum deals, so even teams over the second apron are able to hand out such contracts. Much like the room MLE scenario, the Lakers would renounce their rights to LeBron at the start of free agency, spend the rest of their money elsewhere and then re-sign him once they’re capped out.
The only difference here is that they’d preserve their access to the room MLE to spend on someone who might be more of a long-term fixture in L.A. moving forward. That would help put the Lakers in a better position for whenever LeBron retires.
The bottom line is that the Lakers technically can give LeBron whatever he wants contractually. But the less that they can convince him to take, the better off they’ll be with regard to the rest of free agency.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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