LeBron James Discussion: Not Returning To The Lakers

I think there’s a level of truth to this thought. LeBron is larger than life. Luka, as popular as he is, is still ascending.

 

Lebron making friends

 

…breaking news. Rich and famous man may have cheated on spouse.

 

All of the hard stuff he has to do outside of basketball and training is taken care of, though.

Like, if you have kids, a 9-5, have to take care of your parents, and then have to come back home and cook a full course dinner, etc., you have to struggle far more than some guy who can get his kids dropped off to school, nannies all over, parents have a private home next to you, private chefs, etc.,

He has free time to do whatever he wants

 

yeah, this seems just incredibly obvious to me. like i'll be shocked if he's here next year, and i fully expect the headline to be that he accepted a lot less to play in cleveland, making us look bad when in reality, this choice was made last summer.

 

No way he’d play here for minimum. Doesn’t fit his narrative.

 

Sorry, I guess he’s losing ground to the albino rat pack. Luka and AR are more fun to watch in starring roles. Bron has already checked out IMHO, and he’s just hunting stats.

I say that, but he’s still my favorite player

 

Don't think he's hunting stats. If he was, he'd be taking more shots. If Reaves and Luka were healthy, his shot attempts would probably be around 14 right now. He's invested in what the Lakers are doing but it's probably tough for him to transition away from not being the focal point of a team. Think about it, the guy is going through his first season of not being the most important player on a team since he was what? age 10?

I think there's a chance he will still re-sign with the Lakers. If money is the contention though, I'm not sure what he's expecting. Not a lot of competitive teams are willing to pay LeBron any more than $30 million per year so unless he wants to chase a farewell tour with a bad team and get paid, his best option is probably to go to the Warriors, Knicks, Cavs, or Lakers.

 

That all sounds good, but he isn't the only player that could afford to do that. That dude is just special and extremely committed to his craft. Who in the hell, have you ever heard about, that's spent millions on hi tech sleep chambers and such? This guy is a borderline physco fanatic about this stuff.

 

slight disagree in that lebron has been very obviously attuned to efficiency as the metric of choice (as opposed to westbrook's brand of stat chasing). one might argue "isn't that good for the team?" but this is where my kobe defense rears its head--the only bad shots lebron takes are iso threes, which have a higher expected value anyway. passing to a player who misses a shot (that maybe you know they can't make) is a form of stat-chasing in that it limits turnovers and keeps your personal fg% high.

but really, i don't think he's stat-chasing as much as image-regulating. people will get mad, but i think he was hoping we'd tank those first 15 games without him instead of looking really good. he and rich panicked a bit, imo, hence the chatter about how their own team really isn't that great anyway.

it will take some very creative storytelling, imo, but it's possible. we can definitely pay more than anyone, and any team that he could put over the top can't accept sign and trades due to the cba. if he wants to take draymond salary and draymond role, i'd love to have him back. i'm guessing rob and company would, too. i think lebron would hate that and will only accept the draymond role elsewhere, as a way to stick it to us.

 

Unless the Lakers find some way to win it all this year, there is zero chance he comes back. The atmosphere around Lebron is a distraction and he doesn't seem to care to control it. The Lakers need to focus on the Luka run now and get him a superstar to play with in his prime. Then build from there without distraction of Lebron and his b*******. Jeanie and her b******* and Rob Dinkus's inability to do anything besides hide half the year like the scare punk he is.

 

James is questionable for Friday's game against the Clippers with left knee soreness
Did he played at All Star game?

 

so much for that clean injury report

 

Good. I don't mind giving that Lakers roster a look that played the first 15 games without LeBron and went 11-4. That team was fun, played together, and played hard on both ends. And now we don't have a net negative out there in Gabe.

Let's see what this team looks like without Bron because we should be looking to shed LeBron this summer and turnign him into 2 really good role players (Peyton Watson and Walker Kessler anybody?). I don't think we should bring Bron back unless it's for something stupid like the MLE ($15M). If it's for anything north of $20-25M, I think that's a mistake. And he'd have to be OK with being a 3rd, potentially 4th option next year depending on who comes in this summer. THe problem is...he won't ever take a backseat to Austin Reaves.

 

Retire already.