Luguentz Dort could not have picked a worse season to have a truly ugly offensive season, both for himself and the Oklahoma City Thunder. The bulldog defender has backed his team into a corner with very few options.
With a cap crunch coming, Dort's $17.7 million team option for 2026-27 sticks out as a salary the Thunder would almost certainly like off the books. With several players ready to step up and take his spot, Oklahoma City's ideal circumstances should have been picking up that option and dumping that contract to someone else for draft pick capital.
It is tough to envision many, if any, teams viewing Dort as a truly positive asset in trade negotiations at that price after the NBA Playoffs. If no rival franchises are willing to pay to take him off the Thunder's hands, Sam Presti's simplest solution would be to just decline the team option and let him go to the highest bidder in free agency.
That is where the Los Angeles Lakers come in. Rob Pelinka will need high-energy defender alongside a backcourt of Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. Dort may even be available at a prove-it price. Do the Lakers bite?
Luguentz Dort would be a high risk, high reward gamble for the Lakers
The Lakers know what it is like to employ one-way players. There have been plenty of those on the roster over recent seasons. In the efforts to move away from the drawbacks that come with that type of roster, pursuing Dort would mean being reasonably convinced that he is not one of them.
That is a tough idea to sell yourself on after watching the houses built brick by brick in the playoffs. Dort followed up regular-season shooting splits of 39-34-76 with a postseason that featured 5.5 points per game on 36.6 percent from the field and an even more woeful percentage of 30.8 on the deep ball.
It is not like the shot quality was bad on the deep ball either. Defenses were daring Dort to punish them.
The Thunder wing was averaging 2.2 wide-open attempts from triple per game throughout the 2026 NBA Playoffs. Dort was only hitting 33.3 percent on those shots.
Typically, the argument in these types of instances is Luka Doncic can turn help turn around bad to mediocre shooters with the opportunities he creates for his teammates due to his gravity. However, Dort is already benefitting from easy looks. He just doesn't hit them.
Dort does have two regular season campaigns of strong shooting (39.4 percent from deep in 2023-24 and 41.2 percent in 2024-25), so it is difficult to chalk him up as completely incapable. For the Lakers, this can come down to a debate of who they believe walks through those doors.
Assuming the Thunder come to the conclusion that trading Dort for positive value is a fruitless endeavor, the NBA champion should be there for the taking. His defense speaks for itself. If the offense follows suit, the Lakers can nab themselves a steal by rolling the dice on helping him recapture his spark. If not, that gamble would go bankrupt Los Angeles quickly.
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