3 bold predictions for Luka Doncic and the Lakers in 2025-26 NBA season

It's officially the dawn of the Luka Doncic era for the LA Lakers. The Slovenian wunderkind will play his first full season with the Purple & Gold, and, with LeBron James currently nursing an injury, he's going to do most of the heavy lifting.

The Lakers made some moves in the offseason, adding Marcus Smart and Deandre Ayton to solve some of their issues. It'll be JJ Redick's second year in charge of the team, and the early returns were fairly encouraging.

With that in mind, we're going to dig deep into the tape, the roster, and the schedule to determine three bold predictions for the 2025-26 LA Lakers and how they'll fare this season.

3 Bold predictions for the Lakers

LeBron James will play no more than 50 games

LeBron James is entering his 23rd season in the NBA. He's going to be 41 years old by the end of the season, and it looks like Father Time is finally catching up to him. He's going to miss the start of the year and will reportedly target a mid-November season debut as he deals with a sciatica injury.

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James played 70 games last season, and while he's been durable for most of his career, that hasn't been the case since he arrived in Los Angeles. Since playing all 82 games in his last year in Cleveland, he's played in 55, 67, 45, 56, 55, 71, and 70 games. This year, he'll play in no more than 50 games.

Luka Doncic will lead the league in scoring

Without LeBron James, Luka Doncic will have to do most of the heavy lifting. As such, he should be in a position to top the best scorers in the league and run away with the Scoring Title again, assuming he's healthy.

He averaged a career-best 33.8 points per game in 2024 when he won the Scoring Title, more than the 32.7 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander averaged last season. He can score from all three levels and get to the free-throw line at will.

Lakers won't be a top-four seed

Despite Doncic's best efforts, the Lakers still won't be a top-four team in the Western Conference. They'll be streaky again and a playoff team, but they won't be one of the driving forces in the conference.

While they should be better than last season, they still don't have much of an interior defense, and they could use more shooting. As such, it's hard to envision them doing better than the OKC Thunder, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, and Dallas Mavericks, at least.

Edited by Ernesto Cova