This has become real silly real quick. Rich Paul drops his standard “LeBron Wants to Win Now” press statement and planet Earth loses its shit. Let’s dig into why this is so much sound and fury signifying nothing.
1) LeBron is old. There will be zero teams ponying up alpha assets to toss at a player who will retire before some of the picks potentially used convey. This is a simple fact seemingly being ignored by, well, virtually everyone else.
2) LeBron can no longer take a team on a deep playoff run on his own. He honestly can’t even will a team into the playin, not anymore. AD wasn’t good enough to do it, even with LeBron and you can a big chunk of blame on the front office for several years of roster mismanagement. Of course The Westbrook deal comes to mind but that was just most egregious example of a front office that doesn’t have a clear notion of what the team identity needs to be.
3) The Kobe Konundrum. I feel like this is the 3rd or so time making this specific point here but evidently there’s still space between the nail head and the wood so let’s bang it down one more time: any team that trades for LeBron will decimate its roster to do so or trade their best player. For a 40 year old superstar that will not be happening.
4) The Lakers don’t want to trade LeBron. They want for every single record he breaks to be in a purple and gold jersey. They want his retirement tour to be as a Laker. They want to be the last team he plays for. He might technically retire a Cav (I could see them signing him on a vet minimum and then retiring) but it would be malpractice for them to gut the roster so he can take a personal victory tour. Not happening.
5) This is just more of Rich Paul doing what he does. Whenever he goes into an off-season where an extension is on the line he makes the media rounds with the same, basic statement: “the franchise needs to surround my max salaried player with the right pieces so he can win another title.” Surprise, that’s part of his job. Just like Rob and his “we’ll turn over every stone!” Quote he drops annually, this is just media posturing. That’s all any of this is and, since it’s a slow news day unless you’re paying attention to the real time dismemberment of our fragile democracy, it has dominated the news cycle. To me it’s all mildly funny but mostly boring and rehashed old BS.
Lastly, for anyone who wants to gripe that LBJ coulda taken a pay cut. While I feel I’ve addressed that ad nauseam let’s take one more whack at it. It’s not his job to build the team, it’s Rob’s. Rich Paul and LBJ did the Lakers a solid last summer and got bumped in the 1st round, after an all-in trade for Luka that signaled the Lakers preparing to move on from the era of The King. I’m sure that doesn’t sit great but I think James et al understand why because he had Luka on MTG podcast.
Put yourself in LeBron’s shoes, or try to. He takes a pay cut and suddenly he “bought” a title when he was old. Take a pay cut and you instantly lose street cred at every school and speaking engagement. Take a pay cut and you’re saying every sacrifice, every hour spent away from your family should be diminished because some rich white kids who inherited all of their success can’t figure out how to build a team around you without his specific sacrifice. If that isn’t a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with the planet right now I don’t know what the fuck else could be. LeBron has enough money? Tell that to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and every grifter in Congress voting for billionaire tax breaks right now. LeBron has and will continue to earn this paycheck. Try and be content with that before throwing other people’s money into the fire.
If Lebron had simply opted-in without the statement he put out through his agent then nobody would really be talking about it. But we all know…that ain’t how they operate. It’s always some sort of cryptic passive/aggressive stuff going on to keep him as the center of attention. Mission Accomplished.
Wellllll…….most of us know lol
But yeah, exactly. Literally any other player would have just picked the option up. Not the King. That level of minimalism has never been his modus operandi.