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The Los Angeles Lakers are all-in on chasing the NBA championship around Luka Doncic for the next two years. The Lakers went on a wild free agent spending spree on Wednesday to sign Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes, and Collin Sexton. There’s still plenty of time left in the offseason, but it feels like the Lakers’ roster is 99 percent complete.
Trading for Kessler was the Lakers’ big splash, and it will go down as one of the boldest moves of the NBA summer. Top executive Rob Pelinka gave up the team’s unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, as well as pick swaps in 2028 and 2030, to acquire a strong defensive center with a long injury history. This will be the biggest trade of the Doncic era for Los Angeles: the Lakers now have no tradable first-round picks over the next seven years and have committed $475 million to Dončić, Austin Reaves, and Kessler.
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The Lakers can talk themselves into having a championship ceiling now with the league having eight unique champions over the last eight seasons. The biggest thing any team needs to win a championship is a top-5 player in the world. The Lakers have one in Doncic, and that gives them a chance to raise another banner if everything goes right for them, and several things go wrong for their top adversaries.
Kessler holds the Lakers’ championship hopes on his shoulders. You know what you’re getting from Luka if he stays healthy: best-in-class scoring and playmaking; an offensive engine unlike anything else in the league. Reaves is a really good secondary scorer who can replicate the dribble-drive creation and outside shooting that Kyrie Irving once provided next to Luka on the Dallas Mavericks’ 2024 NBA Finals run. Doncic and Reaves are both weak defenders to put it mildly, and this team doesn’t have anyone who can replicate the wing defense that helped power the Knicks to a 2026 championship. That means the defense is all on Kessler, an elite rim protector and rebounder who suddenly has to deliver on 100 percent of his promise for the Lakers to accomplish anything meaningful.
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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/ranking-lakers-place-nba-championship-120000083.html
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Publish date : 2026-07-02 12:00:00
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