The Lakers are trying to build a season around three linked questions that all come back to the same thing: can their new core stay on the floor long enough to matter?
Walker Kessler is supposed to be the defensive anchor. Austin Reaves is now paid like a star and expected to hold up under a bigger workload. Luka Doncic is stepping into a larger leadership role after LeBron James’ departure. The plan is clear enough. The hard part is whether the bodies behind it cooperate.
Head coach JJ Redick put the hierarchy plainly: the Lakers are “Doncic and Reaves’ team now.” That is the frame for everything else. Reaves has a new four-year contract and the organization has made its commitment to him obvious. Doncic, meanwhile, is taking on more responsibility in a season that begins without James on the roster.
Reaves spent the offseason focused on preparing his body, leaning on what he learned by watching James handle that part of the job. That matters because Reaves’ game asks for a lot from him every night. He lives in the paint, absorbs contact and draws fouls, which means the Lakers are not just asking him to score more. They are asking him to do it while holding up over a full season in a larger role.
That test was already visible last spring. Reaves entered the playoffs dealing with a foot issue that clearly affected him, and the Lakers were 17-14 when he was not in uniform. He averaged 23.3 points on 49 percent shooting last season, production that helps explain why the team paid him and why the pressure around him has only grown.
Kessler brings a different kind of pressure point.
The Lakers signed him to a four-year, $130 million deal, a clear bet on a player who has already shown he can change a game at the rim. In the 2024-25 season, Kessler was second in the NBA in blocks at 2.4 per game. He also averaged 11.1 points and 12.2 rebounds in his third year, numbers that fit the profile of a center who can clean up the paint on one end and finish plays on the other.
That profile is exactly why the Lakers want him healthy. Kessler was limited to just five games last season because of a shoulder injury, but Rob Pelinka said he is now fully healthy and fully cleared to play. Pelinka also said keeping Reaves was a major offseason goal, a reminder that the Lakers’ roster decisions were built around more than one pillar.
The fit with Doncic is the other piece that makes Kessler so central.
Doncic said the Lakers’ roster construction — “Re-signing Austin, putting together a trade to acquire Walker Kessler, and then building out our team with young players that could dribble-pass-shoot, and have brought the average age of our roster to around 26 or 27, which lines up so perfectly with building a team around Luka Doncic” — reflects the direction the franchise wants to go. He also said, “It feels great,” when asked about taking on a leadership role without James.
For Kessler, that relationship is not theoretical. He said catching lobs from Doncic will be “a very big part of the offense,” and he recalled catching a lob from Doncic during minicamp in Slovenia. That gives the Lakers a simple offensive lane to explore: Doncic creating, Kessler finishing, and the defense having to account for both the rim pressure and the size behind it.
The Lakers are counting on that combination to work while also asking Reaves to carry more of the offense and more of the responsibility that comes with being one of the team’s primary voices. Doncic is comfortable in that role. Reaves has been paid to grow into it. Kessler has been brought in to make the defense sturdier.
That is the shape of the season. The Lakers have talent, but their new identity depends on whether the players at the center of it can keep meeting the physical demands that come with the jobs they have been given.