The Los Angeles Lakers could have a real opportunity this summer to start to build a championship-caliber team around Luka Doncic. They’re projected to have up to roughly $50 million in salary cap space, and while some of that could be used to re-sign their own players, they will likely want to also use cap space to bring in at least one outside player to upgrade their roster.
According to Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson, there has been some discussion within the Lakers organization about possibly going after Kyrie Irving of the Dallas Mavericks. Before Luka Dončić came to the Lakers, he had a fairly successful partnership with Irving in Dallas, and the two stars took a somewhat unimpressive Mavericks team to the 2024 NBA Finals.
But Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report said that bringing in Irving isn’t apparently something that has a real chance of happening.
“My only real understanding of what the Lakers want to do from a timeline perspective is they want to bring in a talent that fits 27-year-old Luka Doncic’s timeline,” said Fischer. “As great as that pairing of Luka and Kyrie was, I think Kyrie is a little bit redundant with Austin Reaves, and the Lakers, by all accounts, do want to bring him back on the fold.
“I’m not paying too much stock in the Kyrie-Luka reunion at this time. It’s an interesting idea, obviously the pairing worked, but that’s not something I’ve been made aware of at this juncture.”
Irving is 34 years of age and hasn’t played since March 3, 2025, when he tore his ACL. While the Lakers are in win-now mode, it doesn’t seem to make sense for them to bring in any real contributors who have lots of mileage and could fall off a cliff in terms of production at any time.
There has also been a bit of noise that Los Angeles could try to acquire Daniel Gafford, a Mavericks big man who can rebound, block shots and score off lob passes. Gafford played well with Doncic during their brief time as teammates, but it may be hard to imagine Dallas making another trade that would clearly help the Lakers so soon after gifting L.A. Doncic.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: NBA insider downplays talk of Lakers considering Kyrie Irving