LeBron James Discussion: Not Returning To The Lakers

Lebron coming to the Lakers sort of feels like the beginning of the apocalypse.

 

Do Lebron's peers respect him the way they respected Kobe?

 

**** you too Matt.

 

rivals were constantly tweaking kobe during his prime years. it comes with the territory. steph curry and 4 others want zero part of lebron james plus 4 other equally talented players. none.

 

Spoiler: How Noah feels about Lebron

 

He will stink it up. He brings the drama.

 

PLEASE ....Paul George and some other star to go with the best of our young players and keep "LaVar" James away from this team. Especially if he's needing that billion dollar contract ..... errrr ....needs to be the highest paid player in the game to asuage his massive ego.

 

LeBron looked like he was 30 when he was a senior in HS. Pot meet kettle.

 

Long term yeah, how about for the first year of his 2 year deal with player option in 2nd he always does? If he's really all about the rings now with career winding down as Lee Jenkins said talking to Ireland a little while ago, then he needs to do what KD did. So we have depth left.

 

Thanks. Yes, exactly what I would be hoping he and PG would be doing to keep depth for us, with you plugging some hoped for actual numbers in. 34 down to 25-20 is obviously a huge cut though and he's really going to have to want to be here.

 

if i'm lebron...i demand a trade to the lakers right now: for randle, clarkson, and a 1st. doesn't that make it possible to make a bit more cash in FA next year in LA? i admit i'm not fully up on the nuances of the new cba, but i think there's something here.

randle and clarkson probably have to go to get him, anyway, and why shouldn't cleveland get something in return from his inevitable exit next july?

while cleveland is nominally a contender even without irving, lebron knows they'll get steamrolled in the finals (or before), so why not start building at his next location?

i think it's a win all around. it's more than the clips got for cp3. i think the lakers make the playoffs with lebron, killing boston's pick value in the process, and maybe sealing the deal on the second max FA coming to la next summer.

ok, i'll stop daydreaming...but this makes sense, imo.

 

I see this come up alot when we talk about the benefits of LA. But what's stopping Lebron doing all of those things now? Nothing, he already produces movies and plays small roles in them, he has many businesses and has put many of his close circle into high paying, extremely powerful jobs. In all liklihood, the benefit to LA is no longer to players with huge followings but rather to their wives who want to hang in LA and be on reality tv shows.

Love where your head is at real, but all these ideas are coming from the point of view of a laker fan and what's best for his team, not what's best for the player. Very few guys play to be the GOAT and take less money to construct a better team and win more - alot of them play to be good and earn insane amounts of money, with a ring being a positive and the other great players usually feel they are worth more than the max and won't take anything less.

Asking someone to wait a year to get paid is a risky proposition, look what happened to Tracey McGrady, Bernard King, Shaun Livingston, Paul George, Greg Oden, Andrew Bynum, Gilbert Arenas, Baron Davis, Grant Hill, Brandon Roy, Jermaine O'Neal, Yao Ming, Penny Hardaway, Bill Walton, Derrick Rose and Amare Stoudemire - injuries happen. As an agent, you tell your player to get the max amount he can and lock in as many years as possible - the rest can work itself out.

GSW got lucky, Curry's career almost got derailed by injuries so he accepted ~10m per over 4 years. They got MVP production for right around the current non-tax payers MLE. They had two rookies develop into top 30 players in the NBA, Klay and Green and lastly they built their team right in the middle of the greatest cap spike we've ever seen - it pretty much doubled over a 3-4 year period with a 35% increase in one year. So they had a maxed out team, with rookie scale and an injury discounted contract and then the cap spiked and they added cupcake to the mix, who then even took less money which is a once in a blue moon kind of thing. All in all, it's a series of fortunate events that means almost no team can compete with them until the luxury tax forces them to let go of some pieces.

In a best case scenario, it's likely that next year we get two stars; Lebron and PG. They take their max and we retain Ball, Ingram and Kuzma. We have a MLE to get an okay player in his late 20's/early 30's, a rudy gay/patrick patterson/pj tucker like signing. There is an outside chance Brook Lopez settles for that. In my opinion, Klutch, like they do for all their clients pushes KCP for a max and we lose Randle and Clarkson too.