2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Out of Warriors, Sixers, Heat, and Cavs, I think Cavs would be the last option for him.

Deep down, LeBron knows he can go back to Cleveland and get that retirement tour whenever he wants. Cavs are essentially his sidepiece in all of this.

I don't think LeBron retires until three more years. He wants one more ring IMO.

If he goes to Cleveland, the retirement tour along with whether or not LeBron is the reason they aren't winning will be too much of a distraction for him and the team throughout the season. He could come to Cleveland in two years for a retirement tour and they gladly take him back.

Honestly, if Warriors pull off AD by trading Butler, I can see him going to the Warriors. Right now, he probably trusts that those guys have been through it as champions and it would be a fluid transition for him where they will gel from day one.

If not, I'm thinking it's: Miami > Sixers > Warriors > Cavs

I just don't see LeBron being ecstatic playing with Harden + Mitchell on the backcourt. Everyone knows that LeBron would be asked to start guarding those perimeter dudes and they're already a questionable fit with all the ballhandlers.

I also think LeBron is allured with the fact that if he wins a ring with four different teams, he would have a strong case to be the GOAT as it would mean every team he goes to, he ultimately wins. That is why I think Sixers are in play for LeBron over Miami.

 

Who knows what James is going to do? Miami is hard to pass up IMO. South Beach is LA east. He probably still owns a home there. Giannis and Bam covers him up perfectly on D. He knows the coach, the city still has love for him, it would be less pressure than going back to Cleveland IMO. NOW he'd probably get less credit for winning with Giannis and Bam, but perhaps the ego isn't what people think it is. We shall see.

Banking on Embiid staying healthy? Probably not a great idea IMO.

 

Get rid of jake and bring in cucamonga

 

C'mon man, you want to say A, just let it go!!...lol.

 

Lebron is not going to Cleveland. He’s going to Miami. So we’ll just see what Cleveland does but that ain’t happening and he ain’t gonna be a Cav.

 

NO

 

slicks it’s Miami. But I know Savannah doesn’t like it.

 

She knows the "scenery"

 

Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but this feels a little unnecessarily cruel to me. An 18 year old tears an ACL in preseason, spends a year out and then gets diagnosed with cancer for another year out. And he is used to illustrate a point that the team doesn't draft well. I don't think we can infer that and more so I just can't personally get behind that.

Dieng wasn't great. I can't see any other draft picks in the last 6 years. The jury is still out on Sorber, Topic, Mara and Fritz - basically none of them have stepped on an NBA court yet aside from Topic who has less than a fortnights worth of minutes for a rookie.

We'll see how they develop, I think Sorber can be a really good player personally - he can be a high level rim protector, offensive hub and score in multiple ways. He can replace Ihart if he develops to his potential in some time. Not sure on the rest, but time will do its thing.

Yes but you're leaving out the plethora of draft capital they have to bridge that gap. If we got Kessler for 2 picks, 2 swaps and cap space. They could have gotten him for Lu Dort and one of Aaron Wiggin/Isaiah Joe plus 3 firsts. If you disagree that Utah would have wanted to take on salary and the additional draft pick wasn't enough, ok, but they'd have done it for 4 firsts or more. Whatever it is. When you have that many picks, you can make moves.

I can't argue that they've pulled it off - we won't know whether they can recycle players successfully or not until we have hindsight. But what I'm saying is, they've put themselves in the best position out of any team to do so. They have the one of the best rosters in the league, have the most draft picks and have a competent front office that is going to try. No one else is executing to that level on this CBA that is extremely punitive at higher salary levels above the 2nd Apron.

So yes, I believe they'll have to trade one of Chet or Jalen Williams (most likely Jalen Williams). But they've got Wallace and Ajay that are talented young players coming through. If they can get a top 3 draft pick in the Williams trade, they set themselves up to get another wing - that could be a really good piece, have a look at some of the wings that went top 10 in the last few drafts:

2022: Paolo, Jabari Smith Jr
2023: Thompson twins, Brandon Miller
2024: Castle, Buzelis
2025: Harper, Kon Knueppel
2026: Dybansta, Peterson, Boozer, Wilson

If they can trade their young max guys + some draft picks for a top 5 pick, every year they should be able to get good replacements. Easier said than done obviously.

As for Caruso, they could trade for Suggs in a year or two years when Orlando will be desperate to get off of him. They could trade for Eason. When you have that much draft capital, you can make it work.

Jalen Williams practically was a non factor for them last year, and they were a few breaks going the other way from being in the finals. Where I believe they beat New York based on how they played them the whole year. So I'm not sure why they couldn't be competitive without Williams right now. I do think this iteration of OKC has another ring in them.

You have a strange aversion to give credit where it's due when it comes to team's front offices. Fair enough, you don't believe any one front office is more brilliant than another. What I will say is, in finance, people tend to invest in company's with excellent management, because over the long term, a high level of decision making tends to create an edge that results in an advantage. I believe the same holds true in management of sports teams.

There is less than a handful of front offices that are clearly better than the others and the same amount that are clearly worse. Sacramento and New Orleans belongs to the latter, while OKC in my opinion belongs to the former. We are in the middle - maybe a touch closer to the top than the bottom. I don't see any reason not to give OKC it's flowers, they've done a hell of a job for two decades.

 

Miami is hard to pass up from a fit point of view for Lebron. They'd play:

Lebron (on ball creator / help defender guards weakest guy 1-5)
Mitchell (3&D, guards POA 1's & 2's)
Wiggins (3&D, guards Wing 2's & 3's)
Giannis (high usage scorer, help defender guards second weakest guy)
Bam (3&D, has to sacrifice like bosh, guards best Big 4's & 5's)

That team resembles our concept from the bubble year where we had Lebron, KCP, Green, AD, McGee.

The heat would have Fontecchio, Larson, Tim Hardaway Jr, Portis, Jovic off the bench. They might be able to get 1 or 2 more role-players to ring chase. I think they'd be up there with the best of the East.

 

wow. couple huge issues here. first, evaluating whether or not someone has produced on a basketball court is not a moral judgment of either player or evaluator, and that's a pretty weird tack to take here. you're cruel to jhs. he was clearly clinically depressed when he played here (i actually believe this, tbh). don't be such a jerk. second, i didn't say they were bad at drafting, i said they were average. YOU were saying we can infer they're GOOD at drafting and have listed topic as a positive more than once. no facts support this.

you can't find him because he's already out of the league. if you want to argue semantics, i guess they didn't draft him. but they traded for him on draft night, surely applauded for their acumen in doing so, once again pulling one over on the establishment to nab a guy everyone missed on.

yes. so they can't count as wins, even if pundits or fans say so. adou theiro can still become anunoby, too, but nobody's acting like he will just because of who drafted him.

can't possibly know this. they spent the same amount of money (more, inflation-adjusted) on hartenstein but didn't have to give up the picks because their fans allowed tank mode. if we were allowed to sell high on lebron and tank for two years, we could definitely do what okc has done, but you can't do that in la.

anyway, that's off topic, but...

great. i guess we'll see. so far, they haven't. they didn't swoop in and grab giannis (or luka). no amount of draft picks will buy the pick that becomes wembanyama.

so yeah, next mikal bridges is theirs if they want him. but will it move the needle the same way that simply adding hartenstein did. i say no.

i think everyone competing with them currently is on equal footing. but this is a philosophical issue. i don't believe in being great later. i thought espn's future power rankings were one of the dumbest hoops intellectual exercises i'd ever seen. you point to okc, i point to philadelphia, or worse, brooklyn. you plan on brief windows. having a zillion picks later doesn't do much. hell, look at the nets, who accumulated all that draft capital then were forced to use 5 first round picks in the same year and pretend like it was the plan. and no, i don't think trading the current ones for future ones that project worse is 4d chess. it's making the best of a mistake.

because there are only two types: competent and incompetent, and there are precious few in the latter category.

over time, we've outperformed the thunder, as have many teams.

they've averaged 48 wins (after inheriting a 20 year old generational talent to start things off, i might add--which they bungled), been to two finals and won one ring.

our absolutely inept management over the same period averaged 42 wins, with three rings in as many appearances.

i agree that sac and NO suck; i don't agree that anyone is gaming the system strategically, okc included.

 

Listen, I didn't mean that as an attack on your morals - I've posted here long enough to know you have values.

Let me try to say my point more clearly since it came across offensively which wasn't my intention: I don't think we can call a player a bad pick when they haven't had any kind of playing time as a result of an unnecessary cruel start to their career. It's the hand of fate that is cruel, not you making a judgement comment.

The reason I can't get behind that personally is because I've had my fair share of injuries and want to hold out judgement on a player until they get a fair shot at some playing time. That's why I said he was collecting stray shots for no reason. And if Topic or any other player has a career ending injury - I would say it's better to void judgement on that pick - good or bad - just like we do with Greg Oden.

On the topic of Topic's, last year he played 8 games at 10 mins a game coming back from cancer. We can't really draw anything from so little playing time. But he did get two big games back to back at the end of last season at 38 and 39 mins. Here are the stats from those two:

38 mins: 14 pts - 11 assists - 4 steals on 50% shooting 2/3 from 3
39 mins: 18 pts - 14 assists - 50% shooting and 2/5 from 3

I don't know what kind of player he is, but we can't really claim he is a bust - yet. I think after 2-3 seasons or about 1000 minutes across the league or g-league you can make that kind of call.

Also, I don't think I've ever been overly harsh with JHS, I don't normally care much for late first or second round draft picks so I think I ignored him mostly (I don't even think I posted much when we picked him or played him). I did say that I thought JHS was a strange pick because he didn't have any kind of elite NBA skill that I could see - I don't think that's being a jerk at all.

I also find JHS' situation cruel somewhat too, he had a back operation that most likely means he is dealing with nerve issues. Injuries are an extremely unfortunate part of sport. I don't know anything about the depression part, it's never been publicly shared in an explicit way that I know of - but it wouldn't shock me if many players deal with anxiety and/or depression, just like many do in normal life.

I'm not trying to argue any of their recent picks as successes. But I do think Sorber has a similar high end archetype as Carr and Adou if they develop to their max. That's just an opinion of course. But we can look back and say they've done one of the better jobs out of all franchises at drafting their team. You could almost make a playoff team from the picks of who they drafted over the last 5 years. Their average draft pick over the last decade is 29th - over that time they've done a good job of selecting great players.

Giddey (6th Pick) / Ajay (38th)
Wallace (12th) / Wiggins (55th)
Dort (Undrafted) / Tre Mann (18th)
Jalen (12th) / Jaylin (34th)
Chet (2nd) / Sorber (15th) or Mara

That should be somewhat impressive no? I think also Houston, San Antonio & Detroit did a good job of drafting over that timespan too.

We have an opportunity now to develop some decent guys too in Carr & Adou, and to a lesser extent Kaluma (maybe) and Manon (maybe).

They didn't swoop in any get any of these players, but surely we can admit that they could. No one can beat the volume of the picks they can send out. That alone puts them in a position with huge optionality - and that should be strived for by all teams.

I'm not saying we can do what OKC did, because we clearly can't. But it's no reason not to give them their props.

This new CBA calls for new team building concepts, and one of those is cheap young talent. I think the teams that win are the ones that can get the most value from their contracts. And certainly trying to recycle talent around your top 2 guys with a lot of draft picks is one concept.

Yeah I just don't see things nearly so black and white at all. First of all, it's a continuum line of managerial talent - you can have a competent office, but what about the level of skills in negotiations or drafting or developing players or any one of the many things that goes into making a successful franchise. Surely you believe some can be better than others in those?

We've been blessed with a huge fanbase, many more economic opportunities than other franchises and perfect weather to attract players - and we have this back water franchise keeping pace with us through execution with none of the advantages we have. That's impressive to me, I don't know how it couldn't be to others. It doesn't mean I'm a fan of them or their team.

Do you just not like OKC?

 

Have to say @Slick2021 turning into a brutally rational and realistic poster wasn't on my bingo card for Summer 2026

 

Here’s a crazy thought experiment….

…. if LeBron wants to play with AD, why doesn’t he just goto Washington?

Washington quickly built a competitive team as long as AD remains healthy. They also have a group of really nice young players as well.

They would have a lot of length if this was their starting lineup, and they would have a ton of bench depth as well:
Trae/Carrington
Dybantsa/Kyshawn George/Tre Johnson
Lebron/Coulibaly/Middleton
AD/Whitmore
Sarr/Ayton


They would have a legit 12 deep rotation of really solid players.

 

I think Washington are close to breaking out. If LeBron went there… they’d probably make the ECF.

Trae / Carrington
George / Tre / Whitmore
Dybantsa / Champagnie / Middleton
Lebron / Coulibaly / Riley
AD / Sarr / Ayton

Lebron just doesn’t believe in youth at his age. That’s probably why he left us to be honest - he wants some veterans that are battle tested for 1-2 more years.

 

Slick this is directed at you!!!!! Only.

if Lebron does some crazy s***!!!! Like out there s***. Is it possible for him to return to the Lakers!!!!!!!! Is this the best team in the nba with LeBron.?

 

No no no I think the Wife doesn’t want to leave L.A. don’t pull a Brady!!!!! You either go to the Clippers or back to the Lakers!!!!!

 

Slick do you wanna know why he left Miami????????

 

How about we “help” the Nuggets out of their Unsigned FA and away from the 2nd Apron problem. We’ll give them Vando for Cam Johnson. We’ll even throw them a second to let them “win” the trade.

 

I'm sure they'd rather dump Braun on us instead.