The Lakers, Luka Doncic and LeBron James: trouble in paradise

Luka Doncic is still only 26. Sometimes that’s hard to believe, given that it has been almost nine years since he won EuroBasket with Slovenia and eight since he lifted the EuroLeague trophy with Real Madrid. He should still have his very best basketball ahead of him – his prime. He is indisputably one of the best players on the planet and, almost a year after the traumatic trade that left the league stunned, he has settled in as the new franchise cornerstone of the Los Angeles Lakers. That status comes with being one of the most ever-present faces in American sport. His jersey is the NBA’s best seller, ending a decade-long run in which no one had displaced Stephen Curry or LeBron James. And for the first time in his career, he is the top overall vote-getter for the 2026 All-Star Game, which will be his sixth appearance.

Last summer, Doncic signed a three-year contract extension worth more than $177 million, an average of about $59 million per season. It secured his medium-term future while leaving the door open to renegotiate in 2028 and, if everything stays on course, to sign a further five-year deal worth roughly $460 million once he reaches ten years of service in the league. A staggering figure that would push his salary close to $110 million in the 2032–33 season. With the Lakers, there is also a widespread assumption that, sooner or later, he will have a genuine title-contending project around him. This is a franchise built on perpetual ambition and now owned, after a record-breaking valuation of more than $10 billion, by Mark Walter – the billionaire who has engineered sustained success with the Dodgers, Los Angeles’s other great sporting institution. Objectively, everything looks very good for Dončić…

Except for one not insignificant detail: almost at the midpoint of the regular season, it is hard to place the Lakers among the league’s true championship contenders. Against the Bucks in Los Angeles, they lost in the closing moments (105–101) and saw their late-game magic finally break. Until that slip, they were 13–0 in games decided in the final possessions – and this was also their first loss by fewer than 10 points. It was an unsustainable trend that had been masking a worrying reality: the Lakers rank fifth-worst in the NBA in defensive rating; their offense, which began the season at an elite level, has slipped to 10th; and their overall point differential is negative (–0.3 per game). They are among the seven worst teams in both three-point volume and accuracy, have the lowest-scoring bench in the league, and also sit in the bottom seven for rebounds, assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.

After reaching December with an impressive 15–4 record and riding a seven-game winning streak, they have slid to 23–13 overall: 8–9 from December through the portion of January already played. They are now closer to the play-in tournament – the increasingly dangerous Suns are just one game back – than they are to the No. 2 seed in the conference, which is two and a half games away and looked like a realistic target little more than a month ago. What lies ahead is a brutal stretch of five games in seven days, a major issue for a team that lacks physicality, pace and muscle, and is plagued by injuries. LeBron James and Doncic are available now, but Austin Reaves – who was playing at an All-Star level – went down on Christmas Day and will not return for at least another three weeks, at best.

When you examine the league’s main three-man cores, the trio of Doncic, LeBron and Reaves has logged by far the fewest minutes together. LeBron made his season debut on November 18, and Reaves was injured on December 25 – in what was only the eighth game all three had shared the floor. In the seven games before that, they were 5–2. Expanding the view to the top eight players in the rotation, the Lakers have had everyone available in just three games so far. Out of a possible 36. LeBron has missed 18 games, Reaves 13 and counting, Doncic eight, Marcus Smart 10, Rui Hachimura nine…

LeBron, now 41 and the first player to reach 23 NBA seasons, continues to perform well beyond what logic would suggest. He started slowly, but in January he is averaging 29 points, eight rebounds and eight assists per game. Doncic, by contrast, opened the season in exceptional physical condition and form, but that has tailed off in recent weeks. His raw numbers remain eye-catching – 34.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and nine assists in January – yet the spark has faded. His three-point shooting has dipped badly (27.8% on nine attempts per night), turnovers are piling up (5.3 per game), and defense is an obvious issue on a roster short of specialists.

The Lakers are 4–6 over their last 10 games and 7–9 for the season against teams above .500. They rarely slip up against weaker opponents (16–4), but that formula rarely survives the playoffs. Reaves is sorely missed, but the problems run deeper: physical limitations, defense, depth and shooting cast a long shadow. With the trade deadline looming on February 5, the front office faces tough decisions about how much to invest now and how much flexibility to preserve for what may be, starting as early as next June, a future built around Doncic without LeBron.

The Lakers are a good team – but they don’t look like a great one. And as the midpoint of the season approaches, what a team looks like is usually what it is. So Doncic watches the Finals from a distance for now, the same stage he reached less than two years ago with the Mavericks. He is also not the leading favorite, at least for the moment, for an MVP award that continues to elude him – and the team’s recent slide does him no favors at all. Objectively, things aren’t going badly… but they could be so, so much better.

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