Ranking the Lakers’ place in NBA championship race after Walker Kessler trade, FA moves

The Los Angeles Lakers are all-in on chasing the NBA championship around Luka Doncic for the next two years. The Lakers went on a wild free agent spending spree on Wednesday to sign Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes, and Collin Sexton. There’s still plenty of time left in the offseason, but it feels like the Lakers’ roster is 99 percent complete.

Trading for Kessler was the Lakers’ big splash, and it will go down as one of the boldest moves of the NBA summer. Top executive Rob Pelinka gave up the team’s unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, as well as pick swaps in 2028 and 2030, to acquire a strong defensive center with a long injury history. This will be the biggest trade of the Doncic era for Los Angeles: the Lakers now have no tradable first-round picks over the next seven years and have committed $475 million to Dončić, Austin Reaves, and Kessler.

The Lakers can talk themselves into having a championship ceiling now with the league having eight unique champions over the last eight seasons. The biggest thing any team needs to win a championship is a top-5 player in the world. The Lakers have one in Doncic, and that gives them a chance to raise another banner if everything goes right for them, and several things go wrong for their top adversaries.

Kessler holds the Lakers’ championship hopes on his shoulders. You know what you’re getting from Luka if he stays healthy: best-in-class scoring and playmaking; an offensive engine unlike anything else in the league. Reaves is a really good secondary scorer who can replicate the dribble-drive creation and outside shooting that Kyrie Irving once provided next to Luka on the Dallas Mavericks’ 2024 NBA Finals run. Doncic and Reaves are both weak defenders to put it mildly, and this team doesn’t have anyone who can replicate the wing defense that helped power the Knicks to a 2026 championship. That means the defense is all on Kessler, an elite rim protector and rebounder who suddenly has to deliver on 100 percent of his promise for the Lakers to accomplish anything meaningful.

NBA history is defined by dynasties, but there’s two big reasons why different teams keep winning the championship in this era. The first one is injuries: more pace and more space has led to added pressure on the players’ bodies, and that often causes them to break down. The Thunder might have repeated as champions if Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell stayed healthy. The Bucks might have gone back-to-back in 2021 and 2022 if Khris Middleton’s body didn’t falter. We’ll never know. The next part is the structure of the NBA’s current CBA. It’s harder to pay three superstars, because it kills your pathways to depth. The Lakers are now using one of the few three-star models in the league.

I’m not going to say the Lakers are atomically drawing dead next season for those reasons. Other teams could have injuries. So far, there are only three teams I would definitively rank ahead of the Lakers going into the 2026-2027 season right now.

That’s the NBA’s Tier 1 of championship contenders. To me, the Lakers are a Tier 2 title contender, which looks something like this:

I would elevate the Lakers above the Denver Nuggets and Houston Rockets as currently constructed. We’ll see if either of those teams makes a significant move, or if they mostly just run it back next year. The Sixers just joined Tier 2 themselves on Wednesday pulling off a shocking buy-low trade for Jaylen Brown.

The wildcards are the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers. One of them is probably getting LeBron James. What else are they doing? If the Warriors land James and Anthony Davis, I’d rank them ahead of the Lakers despite that roster being old as hell. I like the Warriors’ outlook without Davis, too, especially if Kristaps Porzingis can somehow stay healthy (again, it’s always injuries). The Cavs with LeBron look a half-step below the Lakers to me unless they do something else that moves the needle.

The offseason is long. Training camps don’t open until late September, and the season doesn’t start until late Oct. We’ve seen major deals go down on the brink of training camp the last few years, like the Knicks acquiring Karl-Anthony Towns and the Bucks trading for Damian Lillard. It could happen again.

For now, the Lakers are a Tier 2 championship contender in my mind with a tangible championship ceiling. I’d rank them no higher than No. 4 and no longer than No. 7 in the preseason power rankings right now. The reason I still crushed the Lakers in my Kessler trade grades is because I don’t really believe in their chance to reach their ceiling. I think there’s some terrifying downside here for LA if that happens. I do still believe in LA’s ceiling in a best case scenario, though

If the Lakers fall short of their ceiling the next two years? Well, Luka Doncic can be a free agent in 2028. Maybe a reunion in Dallas with Cooper Flagg is coming? The NBA always keeps you on your toes. The pressure is on now to make these moves count for the Lakers. It will be thrilling to watch them try.