LEBRON MUST LEAVE THE LAKERS — AND JOIN THE KNICKS, WARRIORS OR MAVERICKS
He can’t contend for another title in Los Angeles, where Anthony Davis might be toast, and his all-time peak performance deserves a chance with a contending franchise that will draft his son, Bronny
There was a bump from Michael Porter, if that. Anthony Davis felt the same agonizing pain in his shoulder, his neck, his head and across his upper extremities. For five years, his suffering has become a threshold that no longer allows LeBron James to reach the NBA Finals. They made it in 2020, inside the pandemic bubble, and won a championship.
Monday night, amid the culmination and immensity of all Davis injuries, the tandem finally reached an ending. Jamal Murray fought through his own strained calf and drilled another game-winner, eluding Austin Reaves as the Denver Nuggets seek to win a second straight title. With that conclusion, James cannot possibly return to the Los Angeles Lakers with realistic dreams of glory.
When asked if the 108-106 loss was his last game with the team, he stared straight ahead, took a moment, raised the microphone and said, “Ummm, I’m not gonna answer that. Appreciate it.”
Was it a polite way of saying no, he’s gone? “I don't have an answer ... to be honest. I haven't given it much thought,” he said. “We’ll cross that when we need to.”
Nearing 40, after his astonishing sequence of all-time peak play, he needs more than Davis, Reaves, D’Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura. The front office might fire Darvin Ham as head coach, and so what? Tyronn Lue couldn’t walk down the arena hall and succeed. Dan Hurley couldn’t win with this crew. Spiritualism with Phil Jackson won’t work. Forget the Oklahoma City coach, Mark Daigneault, who wins awards when we can’t pronounce his name. This team always fires coaches, from Mike Brown to Mike D’Antoni to Byron Scott to Luke Walton to Frank Vogel to Ham. Who’s next?
No longer should it matter to James. He has a $51.4 million player option this summer, and if he continues to spoil himself as basketball’s version of Tom Brady, he can’t remain in southern California. If he says no, he’s the biggest unrestricted free agent in NBA lore. If he wants to win a fifth title, why not look at New York, where he views Madison Square Garden as a mecca and could play with Jalen Brunson. He could consider Golden State, where he once said “Stephen Curry is the one I want to play with, for sure.” What about the Thunder, where he could team with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander? Why not Dallas, where Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving need help? Why not a storybook ending in Cleveland, where Donovan Mitchell is leaving and the Cavaliers could use a third shot from James?
Anyone who thinks he’s ready to retire hasn’t been watching. His agent, Rich Paul, says James has “two or three years left in the tank.” All a franchise must do is draft his son, Bronny, and place him in a developmental mode. He would leave the Lakers, who don’t have a choice until the second round and might want to move on from his rent-a-legend career. Never mind that Bronny isn’t remotely ready for the big league. Committing to him would be enough for James, who cares more about playing with his son than winning another ring. “Bronny,” he said, “is No. 1 on my list.” Otherwise, he’s stuck playing another season with the Lakers when, honestly, I’d rather see him take a broadcasting job until the Las Vegas expansion team awaits his money and leadership. Giannis Antetokounmpo is a season away from leaving Milwaukee. Acquiring DeMar DeRozan or Zach LaVine won’t help enough. He must leave, or he becomes irrelevant in a postseason ruled by Anthony Edwards, Gilgeous-Alexander, Brunson and, of course, Murray and Nikola Jokic.
It wasn’t long ago when he tweeted out an hourglass emoji before the trade deadline, when Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka did nothing. At this point, after he tried to beat the Nuggets by himself, the hourglass is about empty. The speculation has begun, with sports personality Cari Champion writing before Game 5, “Just got a text from my friend. He says tonight is LeBron’s last game in purple and gold.” His fourth ouster was hours away.
“I just wanna get home to the family, honestly, and start looking at the schedule,” James said. “Obviously, I've got one of my boys trying to decide if he's gonna enter the draft or go back to school. I've got another kid that's playing UBall right now. And my daughter's playing volleyball and my wife is doing so many great things. So it's about family right now and, in a couple of months, I've gotta go to Vegas for training camp.”
For the Summer Olympics in Paris, where Curry will be his teammate and Warriors coach Steve Kerr will lead the team. At this point, James is tired of Charles Barkley trashing his postseason hopes, betting $1 with Ernie Johnson that “The King will be talking after the game tonight.” He’s also tired of the Nuggets beating his team, having to hear coach Michael Malone say he had “the utmost confidence” in Murray. “That’s why I didn’t call a timeout. Let the best two players play their game and get to their spots,” he said, referring to Murray and Jokic.
Not LeBron.
“Jamal just told me, ‘I’m glad I played because I don't know if we win if I don't play tonight. I said, ‘Well, that's the understatement of the year,’ ’’ Malone said. “That kid’s a warrior, man. The bigger the moment, the kid just continues to shine.”
They once said that about LeBron James when he won four times. Now, he walks off the court in Colorado and seeks new answers. New York would be historic. Curry would be magnetic. Amazingly, he controls his own terms.
The team that drafts his kid acquires him, too. Someone will.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.