Lakers, LeBron James agree to $85M contract extension

The Lakers and LeBron James have agreed to terms on a two-year, maximum-salary contract extension, agent Rich Paul of Klutch Sports tells Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports confirms (via Twitter) that an extension agreement is in place and that it will run through 2023. That means the new deal has essentially replaced LeBron’s 2021-22 player option with a guaranteed season and tacked on one extra year to his contract.

James, who will earn $39,219,566 in 2020-21, can receive a 5% raise on that figure for the first year of his extension, resulting in a ’21-22 salary of $41,180,544, notes ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Twitter link). He can then receive an 8% raise for year two, which means a ’22-23 salary of $44,479,988. The end result is a two-year extension worth about $85.66M.

It’s not clear yet whether the final year of James’ deal will once again be a player option. If so, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Anthony Davis follow suit and sign a three-year contract of his own with a player option for 2022-23. That would put both Lakers stars on track to either opt out in 2022 or play out their contracts through ’23.

As Charania (Twitter link) and others have noted, LeBron’s son Bronny James is on track to graduate high school in 2023. If the NBA and NBPA have agreed to scrap the one-and-done rule at that point, it could open the door for Bronny to enter the 2023 draft and team up with LeBron for ’23-24.

The elder James will turn 36 years old later this month, but has shown no signs of slowing down yet. In 2019-20, he averaged 25.3 PPG and 7.8 RPG to go along with a league-high 10.2 APG in 67 games (34.6 MPG). He earned First Team All-NBA honors, finished second in MVP voting, led the Lakers to a championship and won his fourth NBA Finals MVP award.