Report: Lakers Didn't Plan to Sign Anthony Davis to New Contract amid Trade Decision

The Los Angeles Lakers bolstered their future with Saturday's shocking trade that sent Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks and landed them Luka Dončić, per ESPN's Shams Charania.

And that future may have been even more of a question mark than initially thought without the trade.

Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports reported the Purple and Gold didn't plan on extending Davis next season even though he would have been eligible. The big man is signed through the 2026-27 season with a $62.8 million player option for the 2027-28 campaign.

It makes some sense that Los Angeles wouldn't have been interested in extending him. After all, he turns 32 years old in March and has dealt with durability concerns throughout his career. He has played more than 62 games in a season once since the 2017-18 campaign.

While Davis is one of the best big men in the league, the front office surely jumped at the chance to trade him for the 25-year-old Dončić if it wasn't going to give him a new contract anyway.

The trade means Dončić is no longer eligible for the five-year, $345 million supermax extension he would have been this summer, per ESPN's Bobby Marks, and Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison said that played a role.

"We really feel like we got ahead of what was going to be a tumultuous summer, him being eligible for the supermax and also a year away from him being able to opt out of any contract," Harrison said, per Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News. "And so we really felt like we got out in front of that. We know teams, they've had it out there, teams have been loading up to try to sign him once that comes available."

From the Lakers' perspective, this appears to be a clear win.

Dončić is arguably a top-five player in the league who can be the face of the franchise even after LeBron James retires, and they won't have to pay him as much as Dallas would have on such a supermax extension.

"It seems likely that Dončić will sign a shorter extension this summer with a player option in 2028, which would allow him to re-sign after his 10th year of service in the summer of 2028 for the full 35 percent of the cap," John Hollinger of The Athletic wrote. "If so, that effectively gives the Lakers roughly $8 million in extra cap wiggle room in the summers of 2026 and 2027 relative to what they would have paid Davis … right as James is likely gliding off into retirement."

Dončić will help the Lakers compete this season and into the future, while the uncertainty that came with Davis' future is no longer Los Angeles' concern.