Luka Doncic signed only a three-year extension with the Lakers so he could test free agency again when he becomes eligible for a 35% max contract in 2028-29.
Luka Dončić became eligible to sign an extension with the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday, and it didn’t take him long to put pen to paper on a new deal. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, he’s signing a three-year max extension with a player option in 2028-29, which means he’ll now be under guaranteed contract through 2027-28.
We won’t know exactly how much Dončić will earn on his new deal until next summer, when the NBA sets the salary cap for the 2026-27 campaign. The cap was originally expected to go up by the full 10% that it can increase year-over-year, but thanks in part to the ongoing disruption with regional sports networks, it’s now projected to rise by only 7%, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
If the salary cap does rise by exactly 7% next year, it would land at roughly $165.5 million. Dončić’s new deal would thus begin at $49.6 million and would be worth $160.8 million in total. His extension could be worth as much as $165.3 million—the figure that Charania cited when breaking news of the deal—if the cap does rise by the full 10% that it can increase.
Dončić was eligible to sign a four-year extension, but he chose a shorter-term deal to maximize his earning potential. The Lakers can thank the Dallas Mavericks for that.
Had the Mavericks not traded Dončić, he would have been eligible to sign a five-year supermax extension this offseason that began at 35% of the salary cap. Based on the $165.5 million cap projection for the 2026-27 season, that deal would have begun at $57.9 million and would have been worth $335.9 million in total. But once they traded him to the Lakers, he was no longer eligible to sign a 35% supermax. His extension could only start at 30% of the cap, so it topped out at $222.4 million over four years.
In essence, the Mavericks cost Dončić more than $100 million this offseason by trading him.
