by Paul Teetor
You’re LeBron James, LA Lakers superstar.
You celebrated your 41st birthday on December 30.
Father Time is undefeated, but you’re putting up a helluva good fight.
You’re in your 23rd NBA season and your $52 million contract expires at the end of this year. This summer you’ll be an unrestricted free agent, able to sign with any team in the National Basketball Association.
Or you could just retire at the end of the year with your four NBA titles in 23 seasons.
No farewell tour around the league, nothing to mark the retirement of the second greatest player in basketball history, behind only Michael Jordan.
You’re the only man ever to be named to the All-NBA team at age 40, as you were last season when you averaged 25 points.
This year, your average is down to 22 points. For the first time since your rookie year of 2003-04, you were not named an All-Star starter, although you did make the All-Star team.
You look down the Lakers bench and there, sitting in his customary spot, is your son Bronny, a 6-foot-1 guard who hardly ever plays because he’s not really an NBA player. He just plays one on TV.
But he’s a nice kid, and just having him there fills you with parental pride as the first father-son duo to play together in NBA history. Plus, the Lakers made you happy by handing him a 4-year, $8 million contract so the kid has his own spending money. Even in LA, even in the sports/entertainment/celebrity world of fast women, luxury cars and big tabs, $2 mil a year still goes pretty far.
Tonight the Lakers are visiting the Cleveland Cavaliers, the home town team for a kid from nearby Akron. It’s the team that you spent the first eight years of your NBA career on before joining the Miami Heat for four years and then coming back to Cleveland for years 13-17 of your career.
After winning two titles in four years with the Heat, you came back home and fulfilled a promise by leading the Cavs to their one and only NBA title in 2016 – in the process pulling off one of the most amazing comebacks in NBA history, erasing a 3-1 deficit to the budding dynasty of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors.
In four years with the Cavs, it was the only title you won, but at least you dragged the Cavs to the Finals all four years. That means you became the first player in history to reach the Finals eight years in a row – four with the Heat, and four with the Cavs.
Then you left for the Lakers in 2018 with no regrets and no hometown hatred and anger like there was the first time you left in 2010.
But now it’s eight years later, and the Lakers don’t suck but they’re not very good either. They’re in fifth place in the west and falling fast. Soon you will be faced with yet another huge, league-altering decision: return to the Lakers for another year of mediocrity as Luka Doncic’s sidekick – the first time ever that you haven’t been your team’s top dog — or sign with another team that has a realistic chance to win an NBA title.
A team like, say, Cleveland.
Loaded with young, multi-talented players like former USC star Evan Mobley, prolific scorer Donovan Mitchell and slick point guard Darius Garland, the Cavs would be instant title favorites if LeBron joined them and brought all his transcendent skill, legendary work ethic and hard-earned hoops wisdom with him.
Indeed, the young Cavs had the best record in the eastern conference last season at 64-18, but flamed out in the playoffs when their inexperience cost them big time.
During the first time-out in Wednesday night’s game, the Cavaliers showed a video montage of one of LeBron’s finest moments in a Cavs uniform. It was the night in 2007 when he scored 48 points – including 25 of the last 27 points — during Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals against the Detroit Pistons.
The montage finished with the flashing message “Welcome Home.”
Sitting on the bench, LeBron started crying, to the point where he lifted his jersey to his face and wiped the tears from his eyes.
It was a rare sight indeed. The last time he was seen crying publicly was when he led the Lakers to the 2020 NBA title. But that was six long years ago. There isn’t a single other player from that team still on the Lakers roster.
The tears this time could have been tears of joy, tears of regret, or tears of disappointment as he remembered losing the 2007 NBA Finals to the San Antonio Spurs in four straight games.
Or maybe it was all those things. Maybe it was a suddenly middle-aged man remembering the power and glory of his youth when he felt invulnerable and unstoppable.
It had already been a crazy week, even by the Lakers soap-opera standards. ESPN ran a 7,000-word article detailing how Team Governor Jeanne Buss had systematically cut her siblings out of the picture as she negotiated the recent Lakers sale to Mark Walter and his backers, who also own the Dodgers.
One of the main points in the article was that over the last three or four years the relationship between LeBron and Jeanne Buss has soured. Five “sources” claimed that Jeanne blamed LeBron for pressuring the team to trade for Russell Westbrook back in 2021, one of the worst trades in NBA history. Westbrook turned out to be a ball hog who couldn’t shoot and pouted his way through the next two seasons before the Lakers finally dumped him for a Milky Way and a bag of chips.
LeBron, who had assured the Lakers he could control the out-of-control Westbrook, simply washed his hands of the whole mess and walked away while privately blaming GM Rob Pelinka.
So Jeanne had a point there. You screwed up with Westbrook and then dodged accountability.
The other source of friction between you and Jeanne was the drafting of Bronny with the Lakers second round pick – 55th — in the 2024 draft. There are dozens of better players than Bronny working their butts off in the G League just to get a shot at an NBA job, but Bronny the nepo baby cut the line.
Jeanne felt that LeBron was not appreciative enough of what the Lakers had done for Bronny, and by extension, for him.
LeBron handled the controversy in his usual passive-aggressive way.
“Quite frankly, I don’t really get involved in that, or the reports, or whatever the case may be,” James said before the Cavs game. “I’ve seen a lot of it, obviously, but I don’t really care about the reports, to be honest.”
Oh, he cares. He cares a lot about his image.
As the night proceeded, LeBron had the worst game he has ever had against the Cavs – scoring only 11 points, the first time in 13 trips to Cleveland as an opposing player that he has not had at least 20. He shot 3 for 10 from the field, including 0 for 3 from 3-point range.
In the end, the Cavs humiliated the Lakers 129-99 – a 30-point blowout.
Welcome home, indeed.
Even more embarrassing, two of their three best players – Mobley and Garland – were out injured. And still the Cavs had enough fire-power to obliterate the Lakers, who played no-pride defense as the rout was on in the second half.
LeBron is smart. He knows there is no way the Lakers are going to pay him $52 million next season. They have too many other mouths to feed – younger guys like Austin Reeves and Doncic. He will have to take a pay cut if he wants to come back to the Lakers – and that would be humiliating for King James.
Speaking after the game, he said he doesn’t know if Wednesday night will end up being his last trip to Cleveland as a player. And he explained the tears – sort of.
“It definitely got to me a little bit, for sure. I think it comes from being present. I’m trying to live in the moment because I don’t know if it’s my last time here,” James said. “Every road arena I’ve been in, I’m just trying to take every moment in because it very well could be the last time. And obviously, it means a little bit more to me personally because I grew up 35 minutes south of here.”
The only highlight for James in the second half was seeing Bronny play the final eight minutes. The younger James, who scored his first NBA basket at Cleveland last season, had eight points, including a pair of 3-pointers, receiving loud cheers as soon as he entered the game.
“It was a pretty cool moment for him and for our family. And my mom is here watching her son and her grandson,” LeBron James said. “It’s so cool and surreal that my mom gets to watch her son and her grandson play in the NBA.”
LeBron also talked about his uncertain future.
“I’m still playing this game at a high level and I still love the process. It’s about how much juice I can squeeze out of this orange,” he said. “I’m in a battle with Father Time and I’m kind of taking it personal.”
You’re LeBron James, NBA superstar.
After this chaotic week you’ve made up your mind that you’re going back to Cleveland next season for a third stint with the Cavs – and for the biggest farewell tour that the NBA has ever seen.
Oh, and just before the season starts the Lakers will trade Bronny to Cleveland for a second-round draft pick.
Happy trails, LeBron.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. ER
