For at least three years now, everyone inside the NBA has been saying the same thing. One day, Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic want to play together.
This piece of information, if we can call it that, exists somewhere between “belief” and “fact”. Everyone in the NBA has heard it said, and most believe it. If you had not heard it before, you have now. But neither of the two parties most explicitly involved has come out and confirmed it – simply because they cannot.
Nonetheless, Jokic and Doncic’s friendship is well-established, and allusions to the idea of them one day pairing up are starting to seep through. And when viewed through that lens, everything about the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2025 offseason movement – or lack of it – starts to make more sense.
Lakers Eying 2027 in 2025
The idea of prioritizing free agency in the summer of 2027 was given voice in comments by Lakers general manager, Rob Pelinka, at the start of the free agency period.
Pelinka can be and has been ridiculed for this position, and the optics of waiting two years to make significant moves while equipped with the prime years one of the game’s very best in Doncic seems farcical on its face. LeBron James has a year or two remaining, and the general manager is not going to act with urgency during them.
However, in the summer of 2027, Jokic will be a free agent. And it is not for nothing that Denver Nuggets President Josh Kroenke recently gave some voice of his own to the idea that, one day, Jokic might leave the team. Nor is it for nothing that Jokic has declined the Nuggets’ offer of a contract extension.
Jokic may, of course, still sign that extension next summer, rendering any positioning for him moot. But the Lakers have heard the same story about Luka and Joker that everyone else has. And they are planning accordingly.
Jokic Did Not Shut Door On Free Agency
Whether pairing Doncic with what will then be a 32-year-old Jokic is the sensible strategy or not, is not a discussion fit for this space. The point is that it is one.
It was never feasible for Doncic to join Jokic with the Nuggets. The Nuggets would never have had the cap room, nor trade assets – indeed, they were forced earlier this offseason to trade their one good trade asset in order to get salary cap relief, not space.
Jokic, however, has ruled out signing an extension with the Nuggets this offseason. Ostensibly, this is because doing so next offseason instead will earn him more money. Yet it also lays the groundwork for a departure in 2027. And this possibility, however remote, was acknowledged by Kroenke.
However Jokic’s tenure in Denver ends, it is nearer to its end date than the start. 2027 is approaching fast, and Jokic could have taken himself off the table. He did not.
Lakers Planning For Life Without LeBrom
When 2027 does come around, LeBron James’s time in the Lakers will be done by then. He will more than likely be retired, but even if he is not, the groundwork for his departure from the Lakers is quite clearly being laid. Significant trade rumors are currently swirling around LeBron, and even if he stays until the start of next season, the relationship is damaged.
With that situation resolved, with two more years of salary cap growth, and with no contracts getting in the way, the Lakers will have Luka and not much else on the books that summer. It is not for nothing that the team refused to go beyond two years in their unsuccessful offer to re-sign Dorian Finney-Smith, and that Deandre Ayton only signed a two-year pact. Even Austin Reaves has declined an extension that would run beyond that summer. Ridicule notwithstanding, Pelinka said he had 2027 in mind, and the actions have backed that up.
There are, of course, two full year’s worth of variables, chance and changes of mind that can still get in the way. The Lakers know that as well as anyone – after all, no one would have imagined in the summer of 2023 that the Lakers would spend the summer of 2025 working out how to best find a second star for Luka Doncic in 2027 and signing Deandre Ayton. In the NBA, things are forever in a state of flux.
One thing is constant, though – the league-wide belief that Luka and Joker want to play together. If it does not happen, it will not be for a lack of trying. As best as he can, Pelinka has told us so.
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