As expected, LeBron James is back with the Lakers. As maybe should have been expected, despite LeBron James pointing towards the opposite, LeBron James is back with the Lakers on a max contract.
LeBron and Rich Paul made it known when LeBron opted out that he’d be open for signing for less than a max deal, should such a move help the Lakers land a big-name veteran like James Harden or Klay Thompson. It’s since been reported that DeMar DeRozan also met LeBron’s criteria. This implies the Lakers aren’t going to get DeRozan, because LeBron’s deal is, indeed, for the maximum.
There’s nothing wrong with LeBron James earning the maximum salary allowed under the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. He’s earned the right to much more than that over his career. But it’s weird that he’d take a pay cut to play with Thompson and not take a pay cut to play with younger contributors. It brings up a strange question:
Are the Lakers trying to win?
The last two years, the Lakers have finished in the middle of the Western Conference. They had a good postseason in 2022—they made it to the Conference Finals before being thrashed by the Nuggets—but this year, there was no feel-good run, with the first round exit looking even worse in hindsight than it did at the time. (The Lakers lost to the team who lost to the team who lost to the team who lost to the team who won the Finals.) Their best players are a 39-year-old and a big man exiting his prime. The third weapon? Austin Reaves. It’s not a bad team, but it’s not one that could believably compete for a title. At this point, it’s not believable that the Lakers could earn home-court advantage in next spring’s first round.
The Lakers talked a big game last month about hiring a coach who could develop their young talent. They said they believed in the young players they have. They said they wanted to build for the future while contending in the present around the core of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. The Lakers then offered Dan Hurley an underwhelming salary, hired a coach in need of development, and drafted LeBron James’s son. Everyone is saying the right things. Nobody seems to be doing them.
My best guess is that two things are happening here.
First, the Lakers know what they’re doing, and no, they’re not trying to win right now.
The Lakers faced a choice this offseason that wasn’t a choice: They could cater to LeBron James, or they could try to build a title-worthy team around Anthony Davis. The reason this wasn’t a choice was that with Davis 31 years old, building around him would require short term aggression. The best way to win in the short term, though, would involve keeping LeBron James. Davis is too old to be one of only two serious weapons on a championship team. He’d need a better supporting cast than even the one that already exists—the one with LeBron. If the Lakers were to try to build around Davis, the best way to do it would be to keep LeBron James, something which would lead them right back into catering to LeBron James.
Rather than try to blow things up, then, the Lakers decided to accept their fifth-place ceiling these next two years in exchange for a very high floor, one upon which young players and a young coach can hopefully develop into a cohesive and competent landing spot for a younger star in the 2026 offseason. Davis at 31? Not the best first option. Davis at 33 and 34? A great big man to support a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander type of player. It’s a rebuild, but it’s centered on development rather than draft picks. LeBron James is almost a stand-in for the eventual Finals MVP.
The second thing that’s happening is that LeBron James doesn’t know how to run a basketball team. He knows a lot. Enough to be confident, and enough to demand (possibly passively) that he be catered to. But he doesn’t know how to run a basketball team. He seems to be operating under this assumption that either role players don’t matter or elite role players will sign for nothing to play on his team, like Ray Allen once did. Money is money, and even within the intricate puzzle that is the NBA CBA, salary cap space can be used to build a better team. LeBron seems to have said, There are three obtainable players worth a pay cut, and while the first flaw in his logic was viewing Thompson as one of the three best obtainable options, the odder thing is the implication that all other players in the world are interchangeable. It’s Big Three thinking in a post-Big Three NBA.
Would the best role players sign for nothing to play on LeBron’s team? It doesn’t seem like it. In fact, one of them—Thompson—was just offered a whole bunch of money to play on LeBron’s team, and he didn’t take it. Once upon a time, he would have. But the Mavericks are a better team than the Lakers right now. LeBron is no longer good enough to have the pull he once had.
That the Lakers would need LeBron James to take a pay cut in order to contend is the Lakers’ fault, not LeBron’s. His fingerprints are on the roster (his DNA’s especially present at the end of the Lakers’ 2024–28 bench), but the Lakers made the moves, and the Lakers have either drafted poorly, developed poorly, or both. It isn’t LeBron’s fault that the Lakers are where they are. But by being the way he is, the Lakers (possibly correctly) believe they need to cater to him to keep him happy. They can’t be obvious in their rebuild. They need to draft his son.
It’s not a terrible strategy. There’s a scenario here where JJ Redick is the guy to lead this Lakers organization, and aided by LeBron’s presence, he cuts his playoff teeth and learns how to coach a good team before serious pursuit of a championship begins. I don’t think this is how the Lakers are thinking, but it wouldn’t be idiotic for them to say, Hey, our last seven coaches haven’t worked out. We can always get stars. Why don’t we try to develop a coach, then go from there? That is, in effect, what they’re doing. But it’s not what they say they’re doing. That’s why so many things keep not quite making sense.
Miscellany
- I understand Gregg Berhalter is not a very good soccer coach and that the USMNT continues to underachieve relative to its talent. I would like to point out, though, that its talent sucks. There are people out there who really, really care about soccer in the United States who seem to believe that a new coach could elevate America to something like top-five status in the world. Less than a month ago, ESPN compiled rankings in which only one American was among the best 100 players in the world, and that American—Christian Pulisic—hardly made the cut. I’m sure there’s a better option than Berhalter. I’m not sure it’s reasonable to put any hope in making it further than the round of 16 at the 2026 World Cup. (I’m not even sure the round of 16 is reasonable.)
- We love MLB trade season, as you can probably guess, and we would like to welcome it in the wake of the Brewers trading this morning for Aaron Civale. The trade—which sends a solid but not outstanding prospect to Tampa Bay—is a perfect fit. Strength for strength. The Brewers and Rays seem to get each other. It’s not the first time they’ve done something like this. Assume that it will help both parties.
