Lonnie Walker IV’s path back to the NBA is starting to look real again.
After spending last season in the EuroLeague with Maccabi Tel Aviv, the former Spur is once again on the radar, with league sources saying he is a candidate to return this summer. He has an NBA out in his contract until July 15, and there is expected to be interest.
Walker’s most recent NBA stop came in the 2024-2025 season with the Philadelphia 76ers, where he averaged 12.4 points in 23 minutes per game. Philadelphia declined his team option the following summer, and he moved on to a three-year deal with Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Even if he is no longer the kind of player a team builds around, Walker still offers something that can matter: offense. He can create his own shot, and he can score without the ball. That combination gives him a real chance to help as a bench scoring option, even if a starting role is no longer likely.
His NBA story started in a big moment for San Antonio. In the summer of 2018, the Spurs took him with the 18th overall pick out of Miami, then about a month later sent Kawhi Leonard to Toronto in the DeMar DeRozan trade. It was the start of a new era for a franchise trying to reestablish itself among the West’s elite.
Walker became one of the first young faces of that transition. His early seasons were uneven, but he settled in over time. By his third year, he was a double-digit scorer, putting up 11.2 points per game while shooting 35% from three-point range.
He followed that with another season as a double-digit scorer in 2021-22. Then San Antonio rescinded his qualifying offer the next summer, making him an unrestricted free agent. He landed with the Lakers on a one-year, $6.5 million mid-level exception deal, which closed the book on his Spurs tenure.
At 27, Walker is still young enough to matter. He is not a late-career veteran trying to squeeze out one last shot. He is still in his athletic prime, and that alone should keep him on front offices’ lists.
His numbers in the EuroLeague back up the case. He averaged 15.2 points per game for Maccabi Tel Aviv while shooting 45.6% from the field and 35% from deep. The role would be different in the NBA, but the appeal is obvious: a guard who can give a team a burst of scoring and hit threes at a workable rate.
He may never become the player some expected on draft night. But he still has enough left to be useful, and there should be NBA teams willing to give him another look this offseason.
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