The Los Angeles Lakers had two major questions coming into this offseason in terms of retaining their stars. With Austin Reaves agreeing to a new four-year contract to return to the team, all of the attention now turns towards LeBron James.
James is an unrestricted free agent and if he chooses to play a 24th NBA season it is unclear whether or not he will return to the Lakers. While those questions remain unanswered, the latest update is that the Lakers have yet to make an offer to the 41-year-old.
“There was a check-in call made, to my understanding, early in free agency once teams were able to start negotiating with their own free agents after the end of the NBA Finals,” ESPN’s Shams Charania reported. “Since then though there hasn’t been much communication, from my understanding, between the Lakers and LeBron James’ side. And certainly not an offer yet. They’re trying to see what can they do with his $50 million of space, potentially, and then where does that leave LeBron?”
Ever since James joined the Lakers in the summer of 2018, the franchise has always kept open lines of communication with him. Rob Pelinka has been open about he and the Lakers’ desire for James to finish his career with this franchise, but there are a lot of factors to be weighed as the team looks to improve its roster.
James showed last year that he is still one of the best players in the league and can contribute a lot to a winning team. However, the Lakers can not feasibly give him close to max money and still improve the rest of the roster to championship contention level, which is the desire of all sides, including Luka Doncic as well.
It will also be interesting to see how quickly communication picks up between the Lakers and James as the start of free agency just around the corner. The Lakers will respect James’ process of talking things over with his family before coming to a decision on whether to return, but they also can’t wait idly by and potentially lose out on players while waiting for James to make his decision.
The front office also has to figure out what to do with other important pieces from last year’s team such as Rui Hachimura, Marcus Smart, Jaxson Hayes and Luke Kennard, but ultimately it is James’ decision that looms largest over this offseason.
LeBron James not concerned with playing complementary role to Luka Doncic
There were questions about whether James was fine with continuing to play a complementary role to Doncic going forward, but that reportedly is not the case.
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