Larry Brown Sports dropped a report Thursday claiming the Los Angeles Lakers are targeting Nikola Jokic. Yes, that Nikola Jokic. The three-time MVP. The one who is under contract in Denver and has never given a single public hint that he wants out.
This is peak Lakers behavior, and it needs to be called what it is. When a rumor like this surfaces, you have to actually check whether the words on the page connect to anything happening in the real world. In this case, they do not.
Jokic is the most valuable basketball player on the planet. The Nuggets built a championship team around him, kept the front office intact when it counted, and have shown zero interest in blowing anything up. Why would Denver even pick up the phone on this call?
There is no leverage point here. Jokic did not request a trade. He has not hinted at a trade. His agent has not leaked frustration to a friendly reporter. He lives quietly, plays chess, races horses in Serbia, and comes back every fall to win 55 games. That is the guy the Lakers are supposedly targeting.
You know what this really is? This is the LeBron and Luka era Lakers still shopping for their next headline. They have two of the most recognizable names in the sport already on the roster, but the front office cannot resist chasing the biggest available star, even when that star is not actually available.
Rob Pelinka has built a career on swinging for names. Some of those swings connected. The Anthony Davis trade worked. The Luka Doncic trade last year was one of the most stunning moves in modern NBA history. Those wins buy him room to fish for the next big one.
But fishing is not the same as catching. And the Jokic report reads like the Lakers dropped a line in the water hoping Denver might get curious. Denver will not get curious. Denver has a healthy Jamal Murray, a still-improving Christian Braun, and a coach who finally has the roster he wanted. They are trying to win another title, not audition for the Lakers’ next chapter.
There is also the small matter of what Los Angeles would even offer. Austin Reaves, a couple of first-round picks that are not particularly juicy, and Rui Hachimura is not a Jokic package. That is barely a starting point for a role player, let alone the best center of his generation.
Luka is 27. LeBron is 41. The Lakers have a shrinking window with the Doncic era, and you can understand why they are trying to accelerate. Adding another top-five player would in theory turn the Western Conference upside down. In theory being the key phrase.
The bigger question is why this leaked at all. Reports like this rarely materialize from nothing. Either someone in the Lakers orbit is trying to make the front office look busy, or someone wants to nudge Jokic to think about a bigger stage. Either way, it says more about Los Angeles than it does about Denver.
Jokic is not coming to the Lakers. Not this year, not next year, probably not ever. He belongs to the Nuggets in a way that few modern superstars belong to their teams. Report or no report, this is a fantasy dressed up as reporting.
The Lakers will keep swinging, because that is what they do. But this pitch is nowhere near the strike zone.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
