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Possible last ‘Summer of LeBron’ could come down to money or rings
LeBron James talks about how he wants his 15th season to be remembered and what he thinks his future holds.Courtesy NBA TV.
The National Basketball Players Association has had its collective behinds handed to them over the years, which is essential to keep in mind as we enter into another Summer of LeBron – and perhaps the last and most critical one of his astounding career.
The league that James has starred in for 15 seasons has one of the most restrictive salary structures in sports – teams’ overall spending is capped or taxed and players are capped in terms of how much they can earn and for how long.
No league’s success is more driven by its stars and in no league are its stars more irreplaceable.
There are only so many athletes the calibre of James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo or James Harden. Take them away and the league and the sport is an entirely different product. Its appeal is the knowledge fans are watching the rarest blend of athletic ability the planet has to offer.
And yet in negotiation after negotiation the owners have gained ground, earning more cost certainty and control over player movement; the players’ individual shares more restricted.
The relevance as James becomes a free agent again is that at the peak of power the best player in the world and inarguably the best or second-best player in the history of the game will have to compromise to reach his ultimate goal.
If he is determined to earn the most he’s allowed under the collective bargaining agreement he helped negotiate as a first vice-president of the NBAPA – a contract starting at 35 per cent of the projected $101-million salary cap next season – while positioning himself to join a team with the firepower to conceivably knock off the Golden State Warriors, the list of teams he can join is short.
The only teams that can afford to absorb James’ maximum salary and add or retain star level talent around him are the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Lakers. That’s pretty much it, and neither comes with guarantees.
Each team would need to make secondary moves to actually make it happen, but Philadelphia would have a deep, young roster around a trio of James, Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, with some future draft assets as well, and the Lakers would have some quality pieces remaining even if they added James and a second max-level player such as Paul George, as has been speculated for more than year now.
Almost every other move scenario would require the team James joins to gut itself of depth to add James to their existing core of stars.
Donnovan Bennett and JD Bunkis talk everything Toronto Raptors and take fans inside the NBA with news, analysis and interviews.
To walk through just one scenario, there’s no question the Houston Rockets are going to work hard to sign James as a free agent, joining him with Harden and Chris Paul. But to make it happen the Rockets would have to renounce their rights to Clint Capela, the athletic young centre who has been an essential part of their success as well as key role player Trevor Ariza, while trading P.J. Tucker, Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson.
So sure, you’ve got a power-trio in Harden, James and (an increasingly rickety) Paul, but a barebones roster around them.
At the same time James – while ostensibly ageless – is going to be 34 next season. He’s played more basketball than any human his age ever has before. He doesn’t have time to join a team that might be good or could be good.
He needs as close to a sure thing as possible if his goal is to retire with more than three titles and give himself every chance possible to catch MJ’s ghost and be recognized as the single greatest player of all time.
It certainly sounded like winning is what he wants to do most in the hours after losing to the Warriors juggernaut for the third time in four years after being closed out in Game 4 Friday night.
“For me, I still have so much to give to the game,” James told reporters in the bowels of Quicken Loans Arena. “When you have a goal [to win a championship] and you’re able to accomplish that goal, it actually – for me, personally – it made me even more hungry to continue to try to win championships, and I still want to be in championship mode.
“I think I’ve shown this year why I will still continue to be in championship mode.”
As he should be. In his 15th season he played all 82 games for the first time in his career and averaged 27.5 points (his most since 2009-10), tied a career high with 8.6 rebounds per game and set a career high with 9.1 assists per game while shooting 54.2 per cent from the field.
He upped his game in the playoffs, bringing one of the weakest teams he’s ever played with to the Finals by averaging 34 points, 9.1 rebounds and nine assists while shooting 53.9 percent.
For James the question is how to arrive at a utopian basketball twilight where he joins a roster that can win now, win for a while and where he can extend his peak by carrying less of a load than the burden that has been on his shoulders in Cleveland?
Funny enough, there are several teams like that, they just can’t afford to pay him.
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What if James swallowed hard and agreed to play for less money? What if James decided to play for the mid-level exception next season – a deal starting at about $9 million a year that nearly every team in the NBA has or could have access to use?
He could join Houston as an outright addition to a roster that won 65 games and pushed the Warriors to seven games in the Western Conference final.
He could join forces with Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee.
He could have Anthony Davis as his running mate in New Orleans.
He could push Kyrie Irving out in Boston and instantly create a new Celtics dynasty that would be as talented and more sustainable than even what the Warriors have.
The possibilities are endless. And the pay cut wouldn’t have to be forever. After three seasons the Celtics – for sake of argument – could offer James max-level money beginning the season he’s turning 37 (although it would have to be on shorter-term deals due to the CBA’s over-38 rule) allowing him to make up some of the money he’d be sacrificing in the short-term on the back end.
Sure, it might seem crazy for James to leave roughly $80 million on the table over the next three years, but making (guessing here) $50-million a year in his late thirties and into his early forties could even things up a bit.
And in the interim, it’s not like he needs the money. According to
, James rakes in about $52 million annually in endorsements, royalties and other revenue. That number isn’t going anywhere. Retire tomorrow and James would likely join Jordan as one of sports’ evergreen pitchmen.
James has money, what he needs as his career heads into its final phase is a franchise that can help him win now and in the future.
It shouldn’t come to this. Even as a max player James – and a small handful of the NBA’s true superstar class – are underpaid relative to the revenue they generate for their teams and the league as a whole, not to mention the stunning leaps in franchise values owners have seen in the past decade.
But for all their star power NBA players have been slow to leverage it in CBA negotiations and so they’re stuck in a system that forces hard choices.
It’s a system designed to create parity and make it harder for players to move from teams that want to keep them.
Due to a collection of flukes – below-market deals on the books for Curry and Klay Thompson and a salary cap spike that made room for Durant – the Warriors have built a historic-level roster that is nearly impregnable.
The CBA, in turn, makes it almost impossible to match them as the rest of the league is shackled.
In what may be the last Summer of LeBron, as he prepares for his inevitable twilight, if James wants to scale the fortress the Warriors have he might have to make one more tough decision.
LeBron's Decision 3.0: Pros and cons of each potential destination
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