Lonnie Walker: Dubai Joins Race, Partizan No Longer Alone
Negotiations between Partizan and Lonnie Walker now have a rival. A club from Dubai has reached out to his agents, Real Madrid has backed away, and everything still hinges on a release from Maccabi.
Lonnie Walker spent the end of last season watching from the bench. Maccabi left him off the roster for the decisive games of the Israeli league playoffs, and the club’s coaching staff made no secret of the fact that they were unhappy with how the American guard was playing. A year earlier, that same club had brought him in as the most expensive signing in its history.
That scene explains everything that has unfolded around his name this summer. It is also where the news that broke on August 2 comes from: Partizan is no longer alone in the race for Walker.
Dubai, coached by Xavi Pascual, has reached out to Walker’s agents. A day earlier, reports said Partizan was first on his list and that talks were progressing, and now a club entering the EuroLeague this season with deep pockets and a coach who knows how to use experienced guards has joined the conversation.
The numbers explain why so many clubs are calling. Walker is 27, stands 193 centimeters tall, and averaged 15.2 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.2 assists in the EuroLeague last season. Before Maccabi he played for Zalgiris, and he arrived in Europe with real NBA experience behind him. He is a scorer who can create offense on his own, exactly what Partizan’s backcourt has been missing this summer.
Why he’s on the market at all
Walker’s contract with Maccabi runs for one more season, but both sides have long stopped pretending this is a healthy situation. The deal included an opt out clause tied strictly to the NBA. Over the summer he talked to several teams in the United States, the offer he was waiting for never came, the clause expired, and he is back on the EuroLeague market.
Both sides are now looking for a way to agree on a mutual termination. Until that paperwork is signed, Walker remains a Maccabi player, and no club can officially offer him a contract.
What does Real Madrid’s exit mean?
Real Madrid was in the mix, and his agents laid out terms to the Spanish club. Madrid walked away, and not over money: they simply did not want to wait for him to be released from Tel Aviv.
That detail matters more than anything else in this story. The obstacle is not cash, it is the calendar. Whoever waits risks entering August with no reinforcement and no fallback plan, and Partizan has already paid that price several times this summer. Oshae Brissett, Eugene Omoruyi, Wendell Moore, Patty Mills, Jaylen Nowell and Zeke Leday have all passed through Humska, and none of them stuck. Dubai’s entry into the race means waiting now costs more than it did yesterday.
Who pays the salary
Reports differ on how much Walker actually earns, with figures ranging from roughly $2.2 million to $3.3 million per season. The mechanism, though, is well known: part of the salary keeps being paid by the club that is letting the player go, and the new club takes on the rest.
Partizan knows this arrangement from both sides. Maccabi took on part of Ife Lundberg’s contract when he left Humska, and Partizan took on part of Nick Calathes’s obligations when it signed him away from Monaco. It is not an exotic setup, just standard EuroLeague math that also accounts for paying a player to leave quietly.
Where would he fit on the roster
This summer the Serbian champions have brought in Nikola Tanaskovic, Kyle Allman, Kevarrius Hayes, Derek Willis, Lamar Stevens, Alessandro Pajola and Luca Vildoza. News of Allman’s arrival broke the same day Shake Milton signed for Hapoel, which said a lot about how tight this market has become.
With Walker, the backcourt would look like this:
- Carlik Jones running the offense
- Alessandro Pajola and Luca Vildoza rotating across both guard spots
- Kyle Allman as the shooter
- Walker as the player who gets the ball when the offense stalls
That is five serious names for two positions, and it raises a second question: how much of the ball is actually left for all of them. A scorer with Walker’s profile did not sign up to play twenty minutes without plays run for him, and a similar misunderstanding is exactly what pushed him out of Tel Aviv.
My read is that neither the offer nor the name on the jersey will settle this, speed will. Partizan holds the stronger position only as long as Walker believes he will get the ball in Humska, and that edge shrinks with every day that passes without a signed release from Maccabi. The next real date in this story is not a press conference in Humska, it is the day Tel Aviv announces the partnership is over. Until then, it is all haggling.
