Luka Doncic's ex-fiancée Anamaria Goltes said she wanted to settle their issues amicably ... but TMZ Sports has learned she's taken their fight to Slovenia -- and as far as she's concerned, the cost of settlement is $50 MILLION!

Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ ... Anamaria has filed a new claim in Slovenia ... and she is seeking $40 million for herself ... we assume the remaining $10 million is for their two daughters. Luca has said he'd do anything for his kids, so $10 mil may be realistic for them, but the $40 mil is a whole other story.

We're also told she wants to strip Luca of some of his custody rights. Currently, he has the kids at least 2 days a week, and she wants to reduce it to one day a week.

Might as well start for the Lakers next season for the money she's asking.

There is currently no money left for Rui Hachimura. L.A. has 13 roster spots filled and can only pay a veterans minimum to anyone else.
Hachimura made $18.3 million last year and averaged 17.5 points on 54.9% shooting (56.9% from 3) and 4.0 rebounds per game in the postseason.

That Hachimura remains unsigned caused several league sources to wonder whether the Lakers are planning some sort of trade or using the stretch provision on perhaps Jarred Vanderbilt or Deandre Ayton to be able to offer Hachimura more.

Unless we get a killer big,” Worthy said when asked if Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves can lead the Lakers back to the promised land.

No, we need a Giannis,” Worthy said. “We need a superstar. We gotta have it. But in order to get that, I don’t know if we can keep Austin.

I would take just not a top-notch center, but something like a [Isaiah] Hartenstein,” he said. “I’d take somebody who’s a Perkins, somebody that can come in there and slap people around.”

There is clearly some smoke to the Mark Walter investigation. After previously claiming that just $1.4 billion of the assets at his life insurance company were loaned out to businesses he controlled, Walter has since revised that number to $21 billion. That's why he sold the Lakers and might have to sell other assets too.

Full article: https://huddleup.substack.com/p/did-the-sec-force-mark-walter-to

https://www.wsj.com/finance/lakers-buyers-lay-out-plans-to-reach-30-billion-valuation-in-pitch-to-investors-66945709?st=4j5v5X

New ownership certainly has a vision!

“The buyers of the Los Angeles Lakers are telling prospective investors they expect to nearly triple the basketball team’s valuation within 10 years.

That is one of several aggressive financial projections included in an investor presentation being circulated by Thrive Capital, the investment firm helmed by Joshua Kushner, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A group led by Kushner and former Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger last month struck a deal to purchase the team from finance mogul Mark Walter at a $12.5 billion valuation. In the presentation, the buyers laid out plans to expand the storied National Basketball Association franchise, including through international growth and new opportunities in local media rights. 

Those moves would help boost the Lakers’ valuation to at least $30 billion in a decade, the buyer group said, assuming that TV and streaming rights double in value. More favorable assumptions for the same period would place the long-term valuation at $62 billion.

The plan outlined by Thrive identifies around $150 million in near-term incremental revenue by 2028. That would come partly by reclaiming roughly 6,000 broker-held season tickets for single-game sales, which would raise average single-game ticket prices from $217 to $361. Lakers ticket prices have already been on the rise.”

Grimes will be slotted in as a point-of-attack defender with plenty of offensive game, a bet on him as a two-way talent. Team and league sources have long known JJ Redick to be a fan of Grimes, who was a priority target this summer.

Mamukelashvili is a gifted offensive player the Lakers think will slot nicely next to Kessler, per a team source. A Toronto Raptors source, granted anonymity because the deal isn’t official, pointed to Mamukelashvili’s floor spacing (he shot 38.9 percent last season with a quick lefty release) as a strength. He also has some positive decision-making traits that pop in his highlight reels.

Sexton, a 2018 lottery pick, is a gifted scorer who has always been a little too turnover prone. He’s certainly capable as a bucket-getter on the nights when neither Dončić nor Reaves has it going.

FREE TO READ

"9. Los Angeles Lakers

There’s no need to overthink this. The Lakers spent a ton of money on a roster that doesn’t have any tradable draft picks. There are reasonable questions and cause for a degree of long-term defeatism. But in the here and now, they will be good. Perhaps very, very good. Luka Doncic, a generational floor raiser who single-handedly guarantees elite offense, is just now entering his prime, perfectly positioned to win his first MVP award. Is his supporting cast perfect? No. Is it sufficient? Absolutely. Austin Reaves is a hyper efficient primary ball handler who gets to the line, finishes at the rim, creates his own shot, and knows how to shine when Doncic isn’t on the court. Elsewhere, most of Los Angeles’s new role players should be able to support those two on both ends. Ignore their contracts for a second: Walker Kessler, Collin Sexton, Quentin Grimes, Matisse Thybulle, and Sandro Mamukelashvili are all specialists who make sense on this team. For this exercise, that’s all that matters."

The Lakers are still conducting interviews for multiple positions, sources say. A job posting for a video producer was posted to the sports-industry job site, Teamwork Online, two weeks ago.

But other sources, including high-ranking ones, have acknowledged that high-end positions, particularly in basketball operations, aren’t actively being filled. While some people in the organization push back on the notion that the Lakers are in a “hiring freeze,” multiple sources acknowledged that it would be foolish for the organization to make hires of consequence while in this strange moment of its history.

That likely includes the assistant general manager position Rob Pelinka said the Lakers planned on hiring this offseason to handle personnel and scouting. The team hired Rohan Ramades as its assistant general manager of strategy and data systems at the end of the season, and he’s made positive early impressions. It also offered the other assistant general manager job to Minnesota’s Steve Senior and Philadelphia’s Prosper Karangwa, but both executives elected to remain with their teams.

Conversations about a front-office build-out are ongoing, one source said, but it’s not fully clear how or when the lead of much-needed pro scouting staff will be installed.

The pending changes — Iger and Kushner’s groups are in their “diligence” phase of the purchase — have certainly caused some anxiety for employees bracing for another ownership change. The last transition, from the longstanding familial touches of the Buss family to a more bottom-line-driven Walter regime, included multiple rounds of layoffs.

Still, multiple sources in different departments expressed optimism about the direction of the franchise under Iger and Kushner. Some felt the Dodgers’ impact on the Lakers was pushing too hard toward analytics and doing so with an arrogance that turned off some people in basketball operations and the locker room. Those people weren’t upset to see a pathway for new management to come in, even if it’s a bit of a mystery and doesn’t have the track record of the Dodgers’ success.

FREE TO READ

https://www.silverscreenandroll.com/lakers-news/124943/lakers-bob-iger-josh-kushner-sale-mark-walter

After reading this i am not surprised. Kushner was just the bag man — the guy who can get the cash. Once Silver got wind of what was happening with Walters, he called his friend Bob and made him an offer. Iger was never going to say no. Anyone who's read his book knows he loves feeling important.

Conservative, liberal, progressive… none of that matters to the people in that stratosphere. That's for the rest of us to argue about.

Full article is in Slovenian but nothing a quick google translate can't do:

https://sportklub.n1info.si/kosarka/dallas-ali-los-angeles-doncic-brez-dlake-na-jeziku/

“I feel like I was capable of doing this,” Thiero said. “It’s not different from things I was doing in the G League last year. I feel like I got real comfortable in the G League, how to play and everything and just took that break and still trying to get back to healthy and everything and finally getting to go out and play. I feel like I sped myself up a little bit and now I’m slowing down and letting the game come to me.”

He looked far more in control and at ease than he did in San Francisco.

“He just wasn’t rushed tonight,” Lakers summer league coach Ty Abbott said. “He took what was in front of him. He attacked matchups. He understood that there was going to be some paint swarming. Those guys are going to try to flood and meet him at the rim and he made the right pass. And then when he started doing that, it started to open up for him and he was able to finish at the rim.”

Thiero was asked to critique his windmill dunk, which was his first highlight of the game and one that had fans cheering.
But Thiero was not impressed.

“The windmill was nice, but it wasn’t my best windmill,” Thiero said. “I’d probably say that was one of my worst windmills. I didn’t have my footing. I went back and watched it on video and I didn’t really like it.”

Thiero believed his chemistry with rookie Cameron Carr and his defense stood out. He also said Lakers coach JJ Redick had conversations with him about being a better defender.

“Just trying to go out there and cause havoc,” Thiero said. “JJ, he says that the things he wants, you know, we need a point-of-attack, on-ball defender and everything. So, just trying to go out there and be that, try and get reps in defending and then, offensively, just trying to play basketball, just trying to make the game more simple for myself.”

https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2026-07-10/lakers-thunder-game-at-las-vegas-summer-league-aduo-thiero

FULL ARTICLE TRANSLATION:

Luka Dončić took advantage of the weekend to visit Madrid, where he was warmly welcomed by Real Madrid's first man and former employer Florentino Perez. But for his new employers from Los Angeles and Slovenian basketball fans, the hint that he was also motivated to transform his body and prepare for the new season is much more interesting.

“We have a long summer ahead of us, during which we need to focus on progress, both on an individual and team level,” Luka Dončić said calmly, tiredly, disappointedly and also focusedly, a little over three weeks ago after being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, when Minnesota was convincingly better than the LA Lakers, and sprinkled himself with ashes, repeating that his game was not at the right level. At the time, it sounded like a convenient excuse that basketball players use in similar moments. And while the club's sports director Rob Pelinka is preparing the ground for the July basketball market, when he will try to implement part of the forecast about “team progress” with personnel moves, the 26-year-old Slovenian star has already started on the individual side of his “promise”, having returned to his hometown of Ljubljana just four days after the end of the season.

No public appearance is expected for several weeks. You will also search in vain for clues about sports activities on social networks, and even those close to him have fallen silent at his initiative. But the fact is that he has already started working. As if, away from the cameras and attention, he was preparing a sharp response - both to the unfortunate past season, which was marked by a wide range of health problems and an unplanned move from Dallas, and to all the criticism. There were not a few of these, also due to his faltering preparation and allegedly unsportsmanlike lifestyle. In the first phase of the considerable period between the seasons, Dončić in Ljubljana, now without basketball, dedicated himself to transforming his body, which includes both guided fitness training in the gym and a changed menu. The first physical results are already very clearly visible, and the measurement results are also encouraging, but the time for real answers will come under the basket.

It should not be overlooked that Dončić has greatly changed or even adapted his game in recent years. While his distinct instinct and undeniable quality have not significantly changed his statistical curve, his impact and influence on his teammates have. California is also hoping for a more agile, fast and versatile Dončić. It is an open secret that they want to frame him, and they openly see him as the face of the franchise in the coming years. Therefore, it is more or less clear that he will be offered a new contract early in early August, either a four-year contract for just under 230 million US dollars, which would come into effect in 2026 and be valid until 2030, or a three-year contract, but with a supermax contract in mind in 2028. Although he has not officially confirmed this yet, and the evergreen statements "if he is healthy, he will be available" are also held by the leadership of the federation and the national team, it is realistic to expect that LD 77 will be active with the national team this summer. For him, this will be the fifth consecutive summer with the selected team, the highlight of which will be an appearance at the European Championship in Poland and Latvia.

The Slovenian team is expected to gather on July 18, but Luka will certainly not be included in the roster for EuroBasket 2025 at that time. It is expected that he will report for training at the beginning of August after arranging insurance. As a result, he would, at least in theory, also be available for the agreed and already officially confirmed preparatory matches. Before leaving for Katowice, the Slovenians will play twice against Germany, and once each against Lithuania, Latvia and Serbia.

At the same time, at least in light of the club's near future, discipline will be key for him during the international weeks in maintaining or upgrading his prepared base, and above all, utilizing training and matches as additional preparation for the 2025/26 season.

EDIT: sorry, heres the article https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10147005-nba-insider-lakers-wont-be-consistent-contender-until-lebron-james-retires

ETA: Wrote this in a comment and thought it was a good tldr to save you the trouble...

"This is ridiculous man. Look, the team is no longer able to contend as long as LeBron is on the roster. I believe it is a fucked up mixture of both the FO fault and LeBron's performance with the reasons stated above. Pelinka is a shitty gm that nobody respects and who every other GM tries to fleece right? Okay so then..how will this useless GM be savvy enough to navigate team building so as to cover Bron's deficiencies, with what little cap space and assets we have available to do so,  especially at that low price point for signings and the caliber of play that would be availavle? That is why his value is just selling tickets dude. We are in a fucked limbo position where we can't build the contender we need with what we got, and yet no one is wanting to embrace the rebuild, one that I believe should happen sooner as opposed to later. Not recognizing this fact is what I think makes a fan delusional. Just enjoy the gimmick and pray that we start completely fresh from the top down once Bron does retire."

Interesting point of view in the article that I posted, and it personally coincides with some of the discussions I have with fellow Laker fans in my circles off Reddit. I have been saying this for atleast 6mos now on here (or at least aspects of it in comment history), and my main points are essentially this:

1. LeBron has athletically aged out of any sustainable play at any role on the team outside of spot up 4/bully ball slasher (and even then with the recent trends of his 3pt shooting...). It is why we can't and will never get the good big that we desperately need to start alongside AD; where the hell would Bron feasibly play as effectively now?

2. As a result of the above, his cost/benefit ratio is highly uneven for what we get back on the court. (Triple/Double-doubles in a loss are nothing but useless stat padding [worked out SO well with OKC Russ right?])

3. With regards to point 2, I am specifically referring to his defense. I'm sorry but the occasional chase down and good positioning on bigs like Zion or JJJ DO NOT compensate for the overall void that is his defensive output; he simply doesnt try and forces the 4 other players to step up which exacerbates their mental and physical fatigue over the course of the game. This is further exacerbated by the fact that outside of AD we are essentially swiss fucking cheese. (source: Bron's +/-)

4. Following point 3, LeBron is very obviously starting to look like he's 40 out there on offense as well. Condition all you want and practice your shots all you want, but father time will still take your hand eye coordination and ability to get up to finish at the rim. (source: Brons turnover #'s)

5. As a result of all the above, there is NOTHING we can do to remediate these issues. There is no money for needle mover players, there is no trade package for needle mover players, there is no scheme that moves the needle once implemented, and there is no way LeBron moves the needle in any sustainable way without running his engine(read: body) into the ground irreversibly.

Sure the front office is dumpster fire levels of terrible (I have comments detailing their incompetence specifically to team vision and coach scapegoating), but if your highest paid player is starting to diminish in capabilities, that ineptitude is only going to become more, and more, and more obvious everytime they try and make an inane move w/o addressing underlying issues (i.e Russ trade, THT over Caruso, bottom barrel MLE signings every offseason, etc).

CONCLUSION: I believe the article is spot on with where the true kernel of our woes lie at the moment. I understand Bron is going to be here until he retires, and I understand the FO does nothing to help establish a worthwhile baseline of functions. I just think there is a...more than anticipated amount of Laker fans that are deluding themselves into believing an image of success and strategy that hasn't comported with reality in nearly half a decade now. Please let me know your thoughts and perspectives and if there is anything i'm overlooking or too critical on.