LeBron James is unlike anything the NBA has ever seen. The question now is how much longer we’re all going to get to watch him play.
The Los Angeles Lakers’ season – once so promising – came to an end early Tuesday morning after the Oklahoma City Thunder finished off sweeping the Lakers in the second round of the NBA playoffs. It wasn’t supposed to end like this, with a 41-year-old James being the featured player as superstar Luka Dončić watched from the bench nursing a hamstring injury suffered near the end of the regular season.
The focus of the post-game conversation will be, as it was last year when the Lakers’ season came to an end, centered around James’ future. Is he done? Will he be back in LA next season? Does a swan song retirement tour in Cleveland beckon?
“You guys asked me about it and I’ve answered questions,” James said early Tuesday about retirement talk. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve come out as like, ‘Oh, retirement is coming.’ With my future, I don’t know, obviously. I mean, obviously, we’re still fresh from losing. I mean, I don’t know what the future holds for me.
“As it stands right now tonight, I got a lot of time.”
It is undoubtedly impressive what James has put together in his career. He’s the NBA’s all-time points leader, the single-season points record holder, a four-time champion, a 22-time All Star, a four-time MVP, a four-time Finals MVP – the accolades go on and on. He’s also just been the go-to star for a NBA playoff team at a time when most players his age have been retired for close to five years. In fact, every player drafted alongside James in 2004 is out of the league.
But the King remains on the throne.
Every time James’ season comes to an end, there are real questions about whether the world just got to watch The Chosen One play for the final time. An objective look at his career would leave one wondering what else there is to play for: Every imaginable box on the career checklist has been ticked off, including playing with his son, LeBron “Bronny” James Jr.
And yet, James can still go. He averaged almost 21 points per game this season, playing in 60 games and averaging about 33 minutes per game. He’s not just an effective player, he’s one of the straws that stirred the drink this season in Hollywood.
The closest comparison at this point in his career is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who hung it up at the age of 42 after his 20th season. Abdul-Jabbar played about 23 minutes a game and averaged 10 points in the 1988-89 season with the Lakers and looked a shell of the player he was earlier in the decade when the Showtime era began.
James, meanwhile, has lost a step from the explosive dynamo that he once was earlier in his career. And that makes him just a really good NBA player instead of far-and-away the best player in the league.
If he wanted to come back, it’s hard to imagine a single team in the NBA that wouldn’t have him when he becomes an unrestricted free agent on June 30. It’s possible that the Lakers might be ready to move on and begin truly building around Dončić as the focal point of the team’s next generation, but it feels likely that James would still be welcome in southern California if he decided to run it back another time.
After all, as he says, he’s giving all he has still at this point in his career.
“I mean s**t, I left everything I could out on the floor,” he said postgame.
The most likely destination for James’ final run will be in the place where he started in northeast Ohio.
A son of Akron, James was drafted to the Cavaliers in 2004, led the Cavs to the NBA Finals, couldn’t get past an all-time Boston Celtics team and promptly broke Cleveland’s heart by “taking my talents to South Beach” and forming a super team in Miami. He went to Miami, won a couple titles and went on a run unequaled by any other player who wasn’t on the 1960s’ Boston Celtics by reaching eight straight NBA Finals.
The crowning achievement of that run was the 2016 victory with the Cavs over the Golden State Warriors, healing all those wounds from his 2010 departure with one magical comeback over one of the greatest teams in league history.
It’s hard to imagine James’ career ending anywhere other than Cleveland at this point, even after this eight-year sojourn in Los Angeles.
“I’ll sit back – I think I said it last year after we lost – I think to Minnesota – … and recalibrate with my family, and talk with them and spend some time with them,” he said of his next steps.
As so often happens with James, the world will be watching with bated breath to find out what comes next. Maybe the King is done. Or maybe it’s time he takes his talents to Lake Erie.
