LOS ANGELES — The flight is booked. The whole Los Angeles Lakers roster is heading to Ljubljana next month, guests of a 26-year-old born in Novo Mesto who now runs the franchise.
Luka Doncic is hosting a four-day minicamp in Slovenia in August, ahead of the 2026-27 NBA season, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin as reported by Bleacher Report. The itinerary includes workouts, a round of golf, and what McMenamin described as “Ljubljana tourism and bonding ahead of training camp.” The trip is voluntary. The entire roster is expected to attend.
What it represents is considerably larger than the schedule. Three weeks ago, LeBron James signed a two-year contract with the Philadelphia 76ers, ending an eight-year chapter in Los Angeles and leaving Doncic as the unambiguous lead option on a team that has been rebuilt entirely around him. Someone had to decide what the new era looked like. Doncic decided.
This is what franchise ownership looks like in the modern NBA. Not a statement or a press conference, but an invitation. Doncic, who averaged 33.5 points and 9.4 assists per game last season and finished fourth in MVP voting, is now the center of gravity on a remade roster that has added Walker Kessler, Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Sandro Mamukelashvili, and Matisse Thybulle this offseason. None of those players have shared a court with Doncic in any official context. The minicamp is the first attempt to change that.
The Lakers that head to Ljubljana will look nothing like the team that left the 2026 playoffs. Los Angeles was swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round after Doncic’s hamstring injury ended his season before it began. The Thunder, which finished the regular season with the best record in the Western Conference, dispatched the roster without its best player in four games. That series exposed every gap the Lakers carry when Doncic is not on the floor, gaps this offseason’s acquisitions are designed to close.
Kessler, acquired from the Utah Jazz, provides the interior defense the team lacked. His presence at the rim gave Utah’s opponents the worst finishing rate at the basket in the Western Conference last season. Sexton adds a credible secondary ballhandler, which previous versions of this roster never had in sufficient quantity. Grimes brings wing spacing. Thybulle is a switchable defender who can hide on the weakest offensive player and still recover in transition. On paper, these pieces fit how Doncic plays. In practice, making that fit real requires time together, and there is no substitution for it.
Doncic has not commented publicly on the minicamp. He does not need to. There is a tradition in the NBA of stars organizing voluntary player gatherings in the offseason, from Steve Nash hosting teammates in Europe during his Phoenix Suns years to Kevin Durant’s sessions in the Hamptons during Golden State’s championship run. These events rarely produce a single breakthrough. What they produce is the shared context that makes the first month of a real season slightly less difficult than it would otherwise be: the hours in transit, the meals, the low-stakes time in an unfamiliar city where conversation happens at a pace a practice facility rarely allows.
What Doncic is doing carries a dimension those gatherings did not. He is bringing his team to Slovenia, not to a neutral venue. Ljubljana is where he grew up, where he trained before the NBA found him, where the courts carry a biographical weight that a resort in the south of France simply cannot replicate. The invitation to come to his home says something about how he sees this franchise’s identity. The act is the statement.
The broader context sharpens the picture. The Golden State Warriors went another offseason without meaningful roster additions, with Draymond Green returning on the same contract he had already once declined. CBS Sports noted the franchise is entering a season with the same core it had when it finished 37-45 last year, asking whether institutional loyalty to a dynasty can produce different results than it has in three consecutive postseason absences. The Lakers are asking the opposite question: whether a remade roster built around a singular talent can find its footing faster than the schedule demands.
Oklahoma City is bringing back its full rotation. San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama is entering his third season with a year of postseason experience behind him. The Western Conference is not easier than it was. The minicamp in Ljubljana does not change that calculus. It just means the Lakers will show up to training camp having spent four days together in Doncic’s home country, which is more than most rosters this remade can say about their preparation.
Whether Sexton reads Doncic’s pace correctly in November, whether Kessler can operate in the pick-and-roll with a ballhandler who initiates from anywhere on the floor, whether Grimes finds the right moments to be aggressive versus when to defer. Those questions get answered in back-to-backs in late November, in fourth quarters of road games, in the accumulated routine of a long season. The minicamp is not where the work gets done. It is where the work gets started.
Doncic is 26. He has four more seasons before he turns 30, and this franchise is his to define. The invitation to his teammates says as much about that as anything else. They are going, and that is not nothing.
