{"id":379600,"date":"2026-06-29T18:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379600\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T18:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T18:57:07","slug":"lakers-deandre-ayton-marcus-smart-make-decisions-amid-lebron-james-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379600\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart make decisions amid LeBron James rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As LeBron James<\/a> dominated the news cycle regarding his future on the eve of NBA free agency, the Lakers<\/a> retained a different piece of their lineup.<\/p>\n

Lakers guard Marcus Smart<\/a> has declined his player option of $5.9 million and will become an unrestricted free agent, according to people not authorized to publicly discuss the decision.<\/p>\n

Smart is expected to have several teams pursue him in free agency, with the Rockets reportedly a team interested in Smart.<\/p>\n

He was the Lakers\u2019 best defender and averaged 9.3 points and 3.0 assists for the team last season.<\/p>\n

Deandre Ayton<\/a> is picking up his player option for $8.1 million and returning to the Lakers, according to people not authorized to publicly discuss the decision.<\/p>\n

The 7-foot Ayton averaged career low in points (12.5), rebounds (8.2), minutes per game (27.2), but he played a career-high 72 games and shot a career-best 67.1% from the field. He averaged 10.0 points and 9.6 rebounds in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

As for James, he\u2019s an unrestricted free agent who earned $52.6 million last season.<\/p>\n

Lakers president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka<\/a> said during his season-ending press conference with the media in May that they would give James time away with his family to decide his future.<\/p>\n

But there has been so much speculation about James\u2019 future<\/a>, with the most persistent reports the Golden State Warriors are interested in signing James.<\/p>\n

Several NBA executives told The Times they can see James staying with the Lakers on a one-year deal for $30 million if L.A. is willing to pay him that amount. Another executive said he could see James playing two more seasons. The executives could not discuss potential free agency moves publicly because of NBA rule restrictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeBron, we probably haven\u2019t seen a player that has honored the game to the extent that he\u2019s honored the game. He\u2019s given so much to his teammates, to this organization,\u201d Pelinka said back in May. \u201cAnd the thing we want to do more than anything else is honor him back. And I think the first order of business there is allowing him to spend the time he needs to decide what his next steps are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NBA free-agency period opens Tuesday at 3 p.m. PDT, allowing teams to officially begin negotiating. But contracts can\u2019t be officially signed until the moratorium is lifted on July 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As LeBron James dominated the news cycle regarding his future on the eve of NBA free agency, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[153515,20294,27008,8425,423,35682,48,52,51,153514,1415,153513,47,50,49,2302,7389,16714,1417,7556,153516],"class_list":["post-379600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-basketball-operation-rob-pelinka","tag-deandre-ayton","tag-executive","tag-future","tag-game","tag-james","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-laker-president","tag-lakers","tag-lebron-james-speculation","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-may","tag-nba-free-agency","tag-option","tag-point","tag-rebound","tag-several-nba-executive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}