THE OBVIOUS STORY THAT MUST HAPPEN — TRADE LEBRON JAMES TO CLEVELAND
The opportunity makes sense when the East is reduced to one prime title contender — the Cavaliers — and with the Lakers headed nowhere in the breakneck West, a deal could lead James to the NBA Finals
He can slaughter every Phil Collins song ever made — including “Sussudio” — instead of performing and sagging and finishing his 23rd NBA season with another playoff loss. LeBron James cannot retire from basketball until the Lakers, no better than the eighth-best team in the Western Conference, trade him and son Bronny to the Cavaliers.
This is not a sentimental journey home. This is an attempt to help him end his career with a championship, not doable in Los Angeles and completely doable in Cleveland. By means of the league’s dual conferences, James and Luka Doncic are not capable of keeping up with Oklahoma City, Houston, Minnesota, Dallas, Denver, the Clippers and some form of the Golden State Warriors in the breakneck Western Conference. In the East, he would join the best team, a winner of 64 games last season and a peculiar loser to Indiana in the second round. Since then, the Pacers have lost Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles, the Knicks have no coach, the Celtics are trading away players and waiting on Jayson Tatum’s torn Achilles, and the Bucks might trade Giannis Antetokounmpo.
I can’t imagine a better story, to conclude an all-time athlete’s career, than James returning home with his son and helping the Cavaliers to the Finals. What do you think his agent, Rich Paul, was saying in a statement after James signed a $52.6 million player option Sunday for the 2025-26 season? It leaves him available to a franchise that would acquire him and not subject him to a farewell tour. I’ve implored LeBron to retire because I’m tired of him in gold and purple. He has changed colors three times.
Time for a final fourth.
“LeBron wants to compete for a championship. He knows the Lakers are building for the future. He understands that, but he values a realistic chance of winning it all,” Paul said. “We are very appreciative of the partnership that we've had for eight years with Jeanie (Buss) and Rob (Pelinka) and consider the Lakers as a critical part of his career. We understand the difficulty in winning now while preparing for the future. We do want to evaluate what's best for LeBron at this stage in his life and career. He wants to make every season he has left count, and the Lakers understand that, are supportive and want what's best for him.”
What’s best? Deal him at midseason, when the Lakers acquired Doncic and can rescue James from near-.500 torment. He won a title in Cleveland. He played his first seven seasons in Cleveland. He would have two drop-dead teammates in Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley. He no longer carries any animosity for the Cavs owner, Dan Gilbert. The coach, Kenny Atkinson, was with the Warriors in their 2022 title year and would make politics work. The front office relinquishes an All-Star guard in Darius Garland, a small forward in De’Andre Hunter and probably not much more. This might be a one-year dream, two at the most. The East might be won without LeBron.
With him, history is possible — in hoops, and in that city. Why wouldn’t Cleveland do one last favor for a man who spun his way home and finally won glory nine years ago? The Lakers can do nothing for him. They have embraced Doncic, as the Mavericks move forward with Cooper Flagg, and ordered Luka to lose faceloads and chestloads of nasty fat. They can call James a legend and put his number on the arena wall, but he is not Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Jerry West or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He is merely there right now, at 40, becoming the NBA’s longest-tenured player this season and about to pass Robert Parish in the number of games played at 1,611. He leaves. He waves. He’ll put out another movie or podcast. So what.
There is much more. James tweaked retirement issues with a commercial, in which he sings “In the Air Tonight” and immediately drove us out of the room. “You could have everybody thinking they love the song until you actually start singing it. Then it’s like, “I never want to hear it again,’ ’’ he told the Hollywood Reporter. Come on. He needs to contend for a championship. It will not happen in L.A., even with Deandre Ayton — who? — at center. It would in Cleveland.
If he remains at Crypto.com Arena, James would fade as a story, behind OKC, the Mavs, the Rockets, the Warriors and the Knicks. Back in Ohio, he’s the King again. His career has spanned from Trump to Biden to Trump to Obama to Bush. Why would he succumb to time when an opportunity suddenly has arisen? His wife, Savannah, wants him to retire soon. After a recent dinner, a guest posted a nugget from James on Instagram: “Savannah wants me to f--king retire in the next year or so.”
Bring her to Cleveland, too. They grew up in Akron, where the region can watch Bronny sit on the end of the bench until after his father retires. I will not watch another Lakers season that doesn’t mean anything. The league produces almost every dream: Even OKC winning it all.
The NBA would become the biggest story in sports with one killer.
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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.