Things aren’t going well for the Lakers. For the third straight season, they seem to be on the road to nowhere, and fast.
In fact, they may be even worse this year than last, when they failed to make the play-in tournament. And this seems to be wearing on star forward LeBron James, who signed a two-year contract extension before the season.
“I’m a winner, and I want to win,” James told reporters after Wednesday’s road loss to the Heat, via ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “And I want to win and give myself a chance to win and still compete for championships. That has always been my passion. That has always been my goal since I entered the league as an 18-year-old kid out of Akron, Ohio.
“And I know it takes steps to get there, but once you get there and know how to get there, playing basketball at this level just to be playing basketball is not in my DNA. It’s not in my DNA anymore. So, we’ll see what happens and see how fresh my mind stays over the next couple years.”
James turns 38 years old on Friday. The Lakers are more or less an odd mix of veterans such as James, Russell Westbrook and the oft-injured Anthony Davis, and unproven and inconsistent younger guys.
So with the Lakers (14-21) not being title contenders, and James not getting any younger … well, it appears a lot of things are weighing on his mind.
“I think about how much longer I’m going to play the game,” he said, via McMenamin. “I think about that I don’t want to finish my career playing at this level from a team aspect. I’ll still be able to compete for championships because I know what I can still bring to any ball club with the right pieces.
“I think about my son graduating high school soon, going off to college, and I’m still playing. My youngest son will be a junior next year — how much more time I’ll miss. So throughout the course of a day, to the weeks, to the months, I think about a little bit of everything, you know?”
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Based on what he said I can see him joining contending teams in salary cap friendly ways late in the season for years to come. Skip the first 3/4 of the regular season, and join a team in February or March, make the money from media, can take a mid level or min no problem (when you’re 46 and a billionaire already). Teams will sign him, and he’ll do enough to help teams, maybe not run everything through hi though. Just be a talented 3 man trying to fit in.
That’s glass half full. But I would never bet against LeBron changing his mind. He sounds done-ish right now. But he also has a lot of cryptic communications to send to his organization, and it’s harder to see him hanging it up and accepting 4 rings as a total (vs expectations) than it is to see him front running and team hopping to contenders as teams offer him smaller and smaller roles. Because he will realize that if he accepts smaller roles (now that he’s old) he can win more rings.
He’s not leaving the NBA for good anytime soon. He just needs to scapegoat a little bit, separate himself from the current Lakers squad. “Playing basketball at this level just to be playing basketball is not in my DNA”. He’s saying “its not me.. it’s them…”
But it is him. It’s all him. Because the Lakers are learning he is not the centerpiece of any franchise anymore. He can’t keep up with the young guns on any regular season basis, or for a full 48 minutes. That doesn’t seem to be the reality he is choosing for himself to acknowledge here. He’s separating himself, narrative-wise, from this Lakers squad.
The part about his kids sounds from the heart. But I think he’s using those facts to communicate his cryptic communications to the powers that be. All of em. And letting it be known he’s a free agent, when the time comes.
I’d say all of this is pretty dead on. It will be interesting to see how his final hoops chapter plays out, that’s for sure.