The 2025-26 NBA season is officially in the books, and free agency is now just around the corner. The period will officially begin on June 30, but some big decisions need to be made by June 29, the deadline for all team and player options. The Los Angeles Lakers are a team with quite a few of those options.
Austin Reaves: $14.9 million player option
Deandre Ayton: $8.1 million player option
Marcus Smart: $5.4 million player option
Nick Smith Jr.: $2.5 million team option
To go with these four, the Lakers also have one other big decision to make in terms of a guarantee.
Bronny James: $1.3 million partial guarantee for 2026-27 turns to $2.3 million fully guaranteed
Let’s take a deeper look at these five, shall we?
Austin Reaves is definitely the one the Lakers would want to keep more than anyone else from this group. Reaves averaged 23.3 points, 4.7 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 1.1 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game in 2025-26. The 28-year-old was expected to opt out of this player option before last season, and the way he played made it almost a certainty that he will.
Reaves is eligible to get a five-year, $241 million max contract from the Lakers. That would be too much for him, but it appears that’s what he wants. Reaves is reportedly unwilling to take a discount to stay with the Lakers. With a team like the Brooklyn Nets expected to offer the guard a four-year, $178.5 million deal, it is going to cost a lot to hold on to him.
While the Lakers would love for Reaves to stay, that might not be the case when it comes to Deandre Ayton. Ayton had an up-and-down 2025-26 season, averaging 12.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 0.6 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game. There were stretches where the 27-year-old looked great and others where he was terrible, which about sums up his career.
It was reported right after the season ended that the Lakers wanted an upgrade at center. You’d imagine they wouldn’t be too unhappy if Ayton opts out. As for what he will do, the expectation is that he and Marcus Smart will opt out.
While Ayton didn’t prove to be a great signing, Smart sure did. The 32-year-old averaged 9.3 points, 2.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 1.4 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game in 2025-26. Smart is the kind of defender you want next to Reaves and Luka Doncic. He also gives his all out there on the court, and it would be a big blow to the Lakers if he’s playing elsewhere next season.
We get to Nick Smith Jr. now, and he didn’t make much of an impact last season. Smith was on a two-way contract and was given a standard two-year deal before their final regular-season game.
Smith would end up averaging 6.2 points, 0.8 rebounds, 1.0 assists, 0.3 steals, and 0.1 blocks per game in the regular season. The 22-year-old then barely featured in the playoffs, averaging 3.0 minutes a game.
Did Smith do enough for the Lakers to pick up that option? We’ll find out soon enough.
Lastly, we get to Bronny James. James averaged 2.9 points, 0.5 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 0.5 steals, and 0.1 blocks per game in 2025-26. The numbers aren’t impressive, but we did see growth over the course of his sophomore campaign.
Unlike Smith, James also managed to make an impression in the playoffs, and we looked into whether he deserves an extension. Even if he doesn’t get one, it seems unlikely the Lakers will part ways with him before June 29 just to save $1 million, especially if they want his father, LeBron James, to stick around. He is set to be an unrestricted free agent, and it will be interesting to see what he chooses to do.
The likes of Rui Hachimura and Luke Kennard are set to hit free agency as well, so the Lakers might look very different next season.
