How Will Luka Doncic Fit On The Los Angeles Lakers?

With the dust settled on the trade shaking the entire NBA world last weekend, it’s time to figure out how all the pieces fit in their new homes. Anthony Davis’ defense and play-finishing should do wonders for the Dallas Mavericks. But what about Luka Doncic? How will he look while wearing the purple and gold?

The Pros

Let’s get one thing squared away. Regardless of how Doncic fits on this iteration of the Los Angeles Lakers, they pretty easily won the trade. Prior to this deal, they were an aging team with maybe one or two more runs in them and staring at a long, grueling rebuild whenever those runs ended. Now, the Lakers have one of the best and easiest stars to build around to help them usher in their next era of basketball.

As for the current roster, the Lakers did themselves a major favor by trading for a rim-running, rim-protecting big in Mark Williams a few days after obtaining Doncic. Williams isn’t the short-roll passer that Dereck Lively II is, but, for the most part, Doncic should be able to pick up where he left off in the pick-and-roll.

Mark Williams is a dunking machine, dunking the ball the third most often of any NBA player. His 2.9 dunks per game (according to Synergy) only trail Giannis Antetokounmpo and Rudy Gobert.

He benefits so much from LaMelo Ball's playmaking presence pic.twitter.com/SiWJihHihJ

— Sportscasting NBA (@SportcastingNBA) January 29, 2025

Prior to landing Doncic, the Lakers made a deal a month earlier to add one of his former teammates in Dorian Finney-Smith. Outside of lob-catching machines, the second step to building a successful team around Doncic is surrounding him with two-way wings. Even before Doncic’s arrival, Finney-Smith’s ability to be a positive player on both sides of the ball was proving to be a real asset to the Lakers. According to Cleaning the Glass, they are 14.7 points better per 100 possessions with Finney-Smith on the floor.

Ironically enough, this Lakers team even has a lite version of Kyrie Irving in Austin Reaves. The reason the ball-dominant Doncic and Irving worked together so well was because of Irving’s ability to seamlessly oscillate between playing on and off the ball.

For the last four years, Reaves has basically been donning the same mantle next to LeBron James. Reaves is an efficient pick-and-roll ball handler (82nd percentile in points per chance, per Synergy) who is more than capable of creating shots for himself and his teammates.

However, his gift doesn’t also act as a limiter. Reaves is a good shooter (36.1 percent from deep for his career), and when Doncic wants to enter full-on Luka-ball mode, he’ll have no problem waiting to capitalize on one of Doncic’s mesmerizing kickout passes. And given the 26-year-old Reaves is nearly six years younger than the 32-year-old Irving, his timeline much better aligns with the 25-year-old wunderkind.

The Lakers’ remaining role players — Rui Hachimura, Gabe Vincent, Jarred Vanderbilt and Jaxson Hayes — will get the boost in production that comes with playing alongside an all-time offensive player. Think about how Nikola Jokic elevates his Denver Nugget teammates or how players would always have career years when playing next to Steve Nash.

The Cons

We’ve mainly been dodging the subject so far, but the big elephant in the room is how well Doncic will coalesce alongside James — a player who, in many ways, is an older version of him.

Luka and LeBron playing together is like if prime Magic Johnson got traded to a team with late stage Magic Johnson and played with the older version of himself

— Mat Issa (@matissa15) February 2, 2025

Throughout his long, illustrious career, James has struggled to synergize with other high-usage guards, the most notable being Dwyane Wade (see video here) and Russell Westbrook. Like Doncic, James has always been at his best when surrounded by dynamic play-finishing bigs, 3-and-D wings and a sidekick who knows how to play on and off the ball.

The distinction between Doncic and Wade/Westbrook is the Slovenian is a much better shooter. His raw 3-point percentage is pedestrian (35.4), but that’s mainly because he takes so many difficult pull-up threes (100th percentile in pull-ups per 36 minutes). When it comes to wide open threes, he’s been a 38 percent shooter over the last three years, per Thinking Basketball.

James has also become a better marksman in his old age, shooting 40.2 percent from downtown over the last two seasons. Hopefully, their respective shooting acumens help the tandem to overcome its preference to play on the ball in a way past partners of The King couldn’t.

The Bottom Line

In Doncic, the Lakers are set for the future. And with guys like Reaves, Williams, Finney-Smith and Hachimura, they are well on their way to giving hm his own West Coast version of the roster perfectly tailored to his strengths and weaknesses in Dallas.

Thanks to their shooting and unimaginable basketball intelligence, the Doncic-James pairing has a chance to be work better than past editions of this kind of duo. However, given their redundancies, James’ advanced age and how barren their trades have left the cupboards, it seems unlikely they will be anything more than a tough out in this year’s playoffs.

The goal from here should be to help James ride gracefully off into the sunset, while also building a balanced roster allowing Doncic to create his own legacy with the most storied franchise in NBA history.