The Lakers turned their attention to Luka Doncic, "the best offensive player on the planet".
With the departure of LeBron James in free agency, the Los Angeles Lakers rebuilt their roster around Luka Doncic, described by Rob Pelinka as "the best offensive player in the world".
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The Los Angeles Lakers officially entered the post-LeBron James era. After James' departure from free agency, the team spent the offseason restructuring its roster with a renewal of Austin Reaves and the hiring of Georgian center fielder Sandro Mamukelashvili in exchange for one player: Luka Doncic.
As defined by Pelinka
At a press conference on Thursday, basketball operations president and general manager Rob Pelinka left no doubt about who is the center of the project. "Luka is the world's greatest offensive player and for us we have an opportunity as a franchise to be that player in our gym every night, at 26 years old, he is special and demands we do special things to build a team around him", said the 56-year-old executive.
Pelinka also signaled that the evaluations of the roster will continue until the opening night of the season, without ruling out changes in the group.
A mini-camp that unites a group
Doncic organized in Slovenia a mini-camp led by his own players: he even took an airplane and covered all expenses to take teammates to Ljubljana, where the group trained together.
According to Pelinka, at the end of the trip each player wrote a letter of thanks and handed it over to Doncic.
Coach JJ Redick, who played golf with Doncic in Europe before the mini-camp, described the experience as a great group bonding exercise and highlighted that the energy of the trip already appeared during our competitive training back in Los Angeles.
Next steps
After a preseason media day on Monday, the Lakers will play five exhibition games before the start of the 2026-27 NBA regular season against the Golden State Warriors at Crypto.com Arena on October 21.
The current phase is clear: the assembly of the roster is practically defined, there are fine adjustments and the whole project will revolve around a 26-year-old number one shirt that arrives as the last scoring champion in the league.
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Source: Eurohoops
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