Will Dorian Finney-Smith sign an extension, pick up his $15.4 million player option or test free agency this offseason?
Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves aren’t the only Lakers who will be eligible for an extension this offseason. In fact, Dorian Finney-Smith already is.
Finney-Smith has been eligible for a three-year extension worth up to $56.4 million since mid-February. He would have to turn down his $15.4 million player option for the 2025-26 season, and his new extension could start as high as $17.9 million, with 5% annual raises from there.
Granted, there’s no guarantee that Finney-Smith opts out at all. His player option is slightly higher than the projected $14.1 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception and the Brooklyn Nets are the only team expected to have real cap space this offseason. If Finney-Smith opts out and the Lakers elect not to re-sign him, there’s no guarantee that he’d be able to recoup that money elsewhere.
The good news is that the league’s new collective bargaining agreement allows soon-to-be free agents and teams to begin legally negotiating one day after the NBA Finals end. Finney-Smith can get a sense of how much the Lakers are willing to offer him before he decides whether to pick up his player option.
Let’s briefly walk through each of the paths he could take this offseason.
Sign an extension
The new CBA gave the Lakers flexibility if they wanted to sign Finney-Smith to an extension before he even has a chance to test free agency.
If someone declined a player option under the previous CBA, he couldn’t sign an extension starting below the salary in the option year. The new CBA contains no such restriction. Rudy Gobert and the Minnesota Timberwolves already took advantage of that last October as he declined his $46.7 million player option to sign a three-year, $109.5 million extension with a $35 million starting salary.
The Lakers could try to convince Finney-Smith to decline his player option and sign a multi-year extension that begins at a lower salary. He’d lock in longer-term financial security while giving the Lakers more flexibility under the aprons. That could guarantee them access at least to the $5.7 million taxpayer mid-level exception, which would hard-cap them at the second apron, if not the $14.1 million non-taxpayer MLE, which would hard-cap them at the first apron.
The downside from the Lakers’ perspective is that signing Finney-Smith to an extension will cut into their potential spending power in 2026. If they’re trying to keep their books as clean as possible so they can find Dončić a co-star once LeBron James retires, they might not want to re-sign Finney-Smith beyond the 2025-26 campaign.
At most, Finney-Smith could sign a four-year extension worth $93.6 million either on June 29 or June 30 before the new league year begins. At that point, he’d be better off opting in and negotiating an extension from there.
Opt In
Finney-Smith opting in might be the best-case scenario from the Lakers’ perspective. Although they might prefer him at a lower salary for apron purposes, they should prioritize keeping their books clean beyond the 2025-26 season.
This would be far less risky for Finney-Smith than testing free agency, too. While he might want the long-term security of a multi-year deal, there’s no guarantee that one awaits if he declines his player option.
Multiple teams appear to be trying to clear cap space for the 2026 offseason, including the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Clippers. Plenty can change over the next year, particularly if the top free-agent targets take themselves off the market by signing extensions before then, but Finney-Smith might find the 2026 offseason to be more hospitable to free agents than this year appears to be.
“There’s only one team that has a lot of cap space [Brooklyn] and they may want to do a slower rebuild and aren’t looking to spend it all now,” one veteran agent told ESPN’s Brian Windhorst earlier this year. “I’ve never seen a free agency where only one team has real cap space in my career. These free agents are f—ed.”
If Finney-Smith opts in, he’d be eligible to sign a four-year extension worth up to $96.5 million once the new league year begins on June 30. It’s hard to imagine the Lakers shelling out that type of money for him, though.
Test Free Agency
This would be the riskiest path for Finney-Smith. The only reason to go this route is if he isn’t satisfied with what the Lakers are offering and he has credible reason to believe that another team would give him a hefty deal.
Even though the Nets are the only team with significant cap space, another team could try to sign-and-trade for Finney-Smith. Granted, acquiring him via S&T would hard-cap them at the first apron, which would limit the number of potential teams that could even pursue that route. Besides, is he the type of player who’s worth hard-capping yourself for?
If negotiations between Finney-Smith and the Lakers break down ahead of free agency and he prioritizes long-term security over the biggest 2025-26 payday, he could decide to opt out. But after watching Gary Trent Jr., Tyus Jones and Taurean Prince have to settle for one-year, veteran-minimum contracts last offseason, anyone who isn’t a star should think twice about testing free agency if they don’t have to.
There’s no clear-cut answer for Finney-Smith or the Lakers this offseason. It would be fairly surprising if he decided to become a free agent, though.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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