What LeBron needs to return to L.A. — and why it’s not simple

WITH ICE BAGS wrapped around both knees and slide sandals on his feet, LeBron James made a right turn out of the Los Angeles Lakers‘ locker room and beelined to the exit at Crypto.com Arena.

It was March 31, and the Lakers had just completed arguably their most impressive win of the season with a 127-113 triumph over the Cleveland Cavaliers. The victory avenged a 30-point loss to the Cavs on Jan. 28 and capped a 32-day stretch in which L.A. went 16-2 to surge up the Western Conference standings.

The win was the 1,229th of James’ career and moved him past Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most victories by any player in NBA history (combined regular season and playoffs). Not to mention, it came on a night when Luka Doncic topped 15,000 career points and Rui Hachimura reached 5,000.

Still, James’ celebratory mood didn’t last long.

Lakers coach JJ Redick had announced all the individual accomplishments in the postgame locker room, eliciting a cascading round of applause by L.A. players and assistant coaches.

And then Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ president of basketball operations and general manager, addressed the team. He had the game ball in his hands.

Rather than hand it to Hachimura or Doncic or James, Pelinka walked to the front of the room and presented the ball to Redick, who had just presided over his 100th coaching win.

James has a “great” relationship with Redick, sources close to him say — with one telling ESPN that Redick’s hiring is “one thing the Lakers got right.”

But James, who played the past eight seasons in Los Angeles and helped deliver the franchise its 17th championship in 2020, saw Pelinka’s priority in that moment as yet another example of the Lakers taking him for granted, sources said.

Adding to James’ ire, sources said, was the fact that the past dozen or so wins in that stretch came with James willingly taking a supporting offensive role behind Doncic and Austin Reaves.

It was a nearly unprecedented move, and especially so for a player of James’ caliber; he was still named to the All-Star team in his record-setting 23rd season. Rarer still, considering he had been the face of the franchise for nearly a decade.

And so — without even stopping to change clothes — James marched off into the L.A. night, simmering from another perceived indignation delivered by the organization that, as one source close to him told ESPN, tried to “push him out the door,” after acquiring Doncic last season.

Forty-eight hours later, James’ annoyance with the franchise was overshadowed by a disastrous, season-changing game in Oklahoma City. Reaves strained his left oblique muscle in the first half. Doncic strained his left hamstring in the second. And the Thunder rocked L.A. by 43 points.

With less than two weeks to go to the playoffs, the only hope for the Lakers to make any sort of postseason run was for James to return to the role he had relinquished weeks earlier: the ball-dominant player the franchise had previously signaled it was all but done with by elevating Doncic.

At 41, he led the Lakers to three straight wins to finish the regular season to earn the No. 4 seed and a first-round date with the Houston Rockets.

With Doncic out the entire postseason and Reaves not returning until Game 5 vs. Houston, James led the massively undermanned Lakers past the Rockets in six games.

“LeBron was the last man standing,” a source close to James told ESPN.

By the time L.A.’s season ended, a sweep at the hands of the No. 1-seeded Thunder, James was the only player in the league to amass 300 points, 75 rebounds and 100 assists since April 5, the Lakers’ first game without Doncic and Reaves.

In doing so, James showed how impactful he still can be at his age. It also underscored, once again, an awkward reality for James and the Lakers: They both might need each other more than either side would care to admit.

ACQUIRING DONCIC WAS a massive coup, but it created potential pitfalls, too.

Rather than a roster built around James, Reaves and a defensive-minded big man in Anthony Davis, suddenly L.A. had three ball-dominant stars whose defensive effectiveness often waned.

And while there was an eight-year age gap between James and Davis, the two were close after winning the 2020 title together in Davis’ first season in L.A.

James and Doncic are 14 years apart.

Still, the pair, with Reaves, found early success. The Lakers had an eight-game winning streak in mid-February through early March and finished the season by winning six of nine to secure the No. 3 seed and a first-round meeting with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The No. 6-seeded Wolves won the series in five games. Doncic averaged 30.2 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.8 assists in the series but scored just 17 points on 6-for-16 shooting with five turnovers in a crucial Game 3 loss, as he played through a stomach bug.

During the team’s exit interviews, Redick told reporters his team needed to be in “championship shape” moving forward — a not-so-veiled message aimed at Doncic, who had put on weight while he was sidelined with a calf strain prior to the trade.

James, meanwhile, exercised the final year of his contract, rather than negotiating an extension in June.

The opt-in came with a statement from his agent and Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul to ESPN’s Shams Charania.

“LeBron wants to compete for a championship,” Paul told ESPN. “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.”

Paul also told ESPN that James never asked for an extension.

A few months later, when training camp for the 2025-26 season was about to open, Pelinka was asked about James’ future with the franchise and replied: “We would love if LeBron’s story would be to retire as a Laker.”

For the prior few weeks, the Lakers and Doncic had promoted Doncic’s new physique, which had landed him on the cover of Men’s Health and helped fuel a dominant showing at EuroBasket in Poland, which validated the three-year, $165 million extension he had signed with the Lakers.

James, meanwhile, had his offseason training marred by a painful bout of sciatica, with pain radiating across his lower back and down the right side of his body.

He missed all of training camp, the preseason and the first 14 games of the regular season, later admitting that the injury prompted to “question yourself at times if you feel like you’re going to be able to get back to what you know you can do, and do at this level.”

Team sources told ESPN that it was clear the injury weighed on James and his demeanor.

Even so, whatever rancor that James’ side might have felt, a source familiar with the Lakers’ thinking told ESPN their relationship with James was mostly “harmonious.” Even James’ sometimes dour mood at the start of the season as he rehabbed was understood by the source as “the evolution” of an athlete acutely facing his basketball mortality for the first time.

Without James to start the season, L.A. shot out to a 10-4 start, with Doncic and Reaves handling the offense, and the team’s trio of offseason signees, Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia, playing well too.

When James returned, he was rusty, averaging 14 points on 41.3% shooting (25.9% from 3) with 7.8 assists in his first six games. Still, the Lakers went 5-1.

The Lakers’ proof of concept, one they had imagined when they made the Doncic deal nearly a year before, was beginning to emerge.

But then Reaves suffered a left calf injury and Doncic missed time for the birth of his second child, and the Lakers hit a tailspin. They went 5-7 in December, including demoralizing losses to the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Cup quarterfinals and Houston on Christmas Day.

Upon his return, Doncic was named January’s Western Conference Player of the Month, but Reaves missed the entire month because of his calf injury. By the end of the January, James had played in 15 out of 16 games and his scoring was back north of 20 points per game on better than 50% shooting.

Then, when Reaves returned in February, roles and schemes had to be reimagined — again.

When L.A. won three straight games in early March over the Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks and Timberwolves while James was out with a left elbow contusion and left foot arthritis, he saw Doncic put up 36.7 points, 9.3 rebounds and 6.7 assists per game and Reaves average 25.0, 4.3 and 6.0 and knew change would be coming when he returned to the lineup.

“Being challenged to and then volunteering to accept a different role in Year 23,” Redick said of James. “That is incredible growth.”

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AS THE SEASON played out, Lakers officials would on occasion partake in a parlor game of sorts during games at Crypto.com Arena, sources told ESPN: An onlooker was asked to observe James play for a stretch, disregard his name and age and evaluate his play to come up with a salary number that “anonymous” player would deserve next season.

It was their attempt to gauge a fair market price for James’ services.

The full midlevel exception of $14.1 million? $20 million? $25 million? $30 million?

L.A.’s exercise to crowdsource a market value for James might have seemed harmless, but comparing James, the 2020 Finals MVP, to an anonymous 6-foot-9, 250-pound skills vessel could be viewed by James’ camp as insulting at best, lunacy at worst.

And for James to not understand the franchise’s position in catering to Doncic while also disregarding the fact that the Lakers had maintained a spot for not only him, but his son Bronny, could be viewed as obtuse at best and disingenuous at worst.

The last time James signed a contract with L.A., in the summer of 2024, he took a $2.7 million pay cut to help the franchise avoid the restrictive second apron. He told ESPN then that he would have taken even less had the Lakers been able to convince a free agent such as James Harden, Klay Thompson or Jonas Valanciunas to sign with them.

That precedent would suggest James will be reasonable in negotiations this summer and not necessarily seek the max.

A source familiar with James’ thinking told ESPN that the Lakers’ approach in how they show their interest in retaining him will be a factor, beyond the simple dollar amount.

“The Lakers can’t just offer James a number. They have to offer a why behind that number,” an agent who does not rep James but has had clients on L.A.’s roster during James’ tenure, told ESPN. “Their plan for any discount would have to be coherent.”

In late March, ESPN canvassed league personnel to determine which teams, beside the Lakers, are considered viable options for James.

The list, based on informed opinions, included Cleveland, the Golden State Warriors, New York, the Denver Nuggets and LA Clippers. The only team in the group that figures to have significant cap space is the Clippers, according to ESPN NBA front office insider Bobby Marks.

Other teams with the ability to pay James top dollar — the Chicago Bulls and Brooklyn Nets — were not seen by league sources as preferred destinations for James.

As one source close to James, who attended Game 4 against the Thunder on Monday, told ESPN, “I think it’s up to the Lakers. He loves it in L.A.”

And on James’ way out of Crypto.com Arena after the Thunder loss — that same route he took after the Cavs game at the end of March — he was asked if there were any unresolved issues between the sides.

“There’s no static from me,” James told ESPN.

On Tuesday, during his annual end-of-season exit interview with reporters, Pelinka made it clear there’s no static from him, either.

“We probably haven’t seen a player that has honored the game to the extent that he’s honored the game,” Pelinka said of James. “He’s given so much to his teammates, to this organization. And the thing we want to do more than anything else is honor him back. …

“Any team, including ours, would love to have LeBron James on their roster.”