{"id":22340,"date":"2025-07-19T21:36:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T21:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/22340\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T21:36:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T21:36:03","slug":"sources-marcus-smart-plans-to-join-lakers-after-wizards-buyout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/22340\/","title":{"rendered":"Sources – Marcus Smart plans to join Lakers after Wizards buyout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guard Marcus Smart<\/a> has agreed to a contract buyout with the Washington Wizards<\/a> and plans to sign a two-year, $11 million deal with the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> after clearing waivers, sources told ESPN on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Smart, the 2022 Defensive Player of the Year and a three-time All-Defense first-team member, will have a player option on his new Lakers deal to enter a more flush 2026 free agency, sources said.<\/p>\n

Lakers All-NBA star Luka Doncic<\/a> reached out to Smart and made it clear that he wanted to play with the two-way stalwart, sources said.<\/p>\n

The planned move serves as a return to a grand stage for Smart, who made the playoffs in each of his first nine NBA seasons with the Boston Celtics<\/a>. He missed the postseason over the past two years in Memphis<\/a> and Washington.<\/p>\n

Smart has also been limited to 54 games over the past two seasons due to injuries, including to his right finger last season, and he averaged a career-low 20 minutes per game in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

The Lakers, Phoenix Suns<\/a> and Milwaukee Bucks<\/a> seriously pursued Smart, who received permission to speak to teams and had positive conversations with personnel from all three teams, sources said.<\/p>\n

After losing Dorian Finney-Smith<\/a>, a point-of-attack, wing defender was a major position of need for the Lakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guard Marcus Smart has agreed to a contract buyout with the Washington Wizards and plans to sign a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-22340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}