As Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James nears the end of his 21st NBA season, the questions are again coming up about how much longer he will continue to play.
After the Lakers lost in the Western Conference Finals last year, James notably asked himself that same question, contemplating retirement for really the first time in his career.
He ultimately decided to come back to the Lakers for another year though and continued playing at an All-NBA level, even shooting a career-high from the 3-point line. Couple that with LeBron’s known desires to play with his son Bronny, who could enter this NBA this year, and it’s reasonable to think that the 2023-24 season will not be James’ last.
How many more seasons the 39-year-old will play remains in question though, and his agent and close friend Rich Paul of Klutch Sports answered that in an interview on SiriusXM NBA Radio ahead of Monday’s Game 5 against the Denver Nuggets:
“Yeah, you know, I believe so,” Paul said when asked if LeBron will play next season. “Look, I think we definitely have less years with LJ than we’ve already been able to enjoy. But I think there’s a world in which, you know, look, the guy is committed more than half of his life to the game of basketball. I think he has treated it with the utmost respect and been someone to give back to the game. I think we put the pressure on him differently than we put on other people and the expectations ever since he was 18 years old. Obviously I was there. There was no development for him, there was no patience, there was no any of that and he still was able to position himself and succeed. Obviously he was the first NBA player to kind of quote, unquote ‘I’m gonna do what I want to do’ and I don’t think people necessarily like that because in sports, we’re so used to having the mindset of, ‘Oh, you should do what this other person did because this other person was a star, and this other person did this like this, and so you should do that like that.’ But imagine if we did that in science. We wouldn’t have a lot of the cures and the tools to heal and do different things that we do just in life. And so I think it’s OK to allow somebody to be who they are. I get it. And I’m not saying that biasedly because I’m LeBron’s biggest critic by the way, you know? When I have an issue, especially on the basketball court, I go get in front of him, and we talk about it. So I don’t take it lightly on none of my guys that I represent because I actually know the game, I don’t just look at stats and tell you how great you were the next morning. I understand if you did something right or wrong and we develop and work on that in the summertime and we come back to get better. But I do think, to answer your question, yeah, I think we see him, I don’t know how long we see him play but my conversation with him is just have fun. Just enjoy it because you got a lot less years to play than you’ve already played. So just enjoy the ride, man, it’s been a beautiful ride. I think [Brian] Scalabrini, who played against LeBron, probably got a thousand stories and I think when it’s all said and done, they’ll be a bunch of people with a thousand stories or what he meant to the game. Some may have hated it, some may have loved it, but that’s just part of being a competitor. But he’s had an unbelievable career and I think we do see him next year. Now, how many more after that, I do not know. But I think he got maybe two or three years left in the tank, maybe.”
Once the Lakers’ season comes to an end and James decides on playing in 2024-25, the question will then become for what team. He has the ability to opt out of his Lakers contract if he wants and if L.A. is eliminated in the first round, one option would be testing free agency to see if he can find a better team that gives him a chance to compete for a fifth championship.
All indications are that James wants to remain a Laker though and his family of course lives in L.A., so it would take a special opportunity for him to leave that behind for a season or two.
Regardless, whenever this season comes to a close for the Lakers, James will have a lot of things to sort out when it comes to his future.
LeBron James: Anthony Davis has nothing left to prove
One thing that may keep LeBron James with the Lakers beyond this season is his relationship with Anthony Davis, who he of course won a championship with in 2020.
Davis continues to play at an extremely high level for the Lakers, so much so that James recently said he has nothing left to prove to anybody.
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