LeBron James told the Los Angeles Lakers that he was ready to move on from the team Tuesday morning — and the Lakers were ready for him to move on.
That’s not to say that the departure was vitriolic. The Lakers posted a classy tribute on social media, a quote from team governor Jeanie Buss reiterating that James was a “cherished” member of their organization and would remain one. And James posted that it was an “honor” to play for the Lakers while trying to add to the “greatness & legacies that came before me! Hope I made a few proud during my stint.”
The relationship ended with a sturdy handshake and a quick hug as life took the Lakers and James in separate directions. It’s appropriate, the two sides harboring no public ill will as their partnership ends after eight seasons.
Privately, the break will provide the Lakers and James with things that they both want and things that would’ve been impossible to achieve without the separation.
For James, after 23 NBA seasons and more than $1 billion in wealth, feeling like your employer values you probably holds some importance. And the Lakers, after putting James first for years by trading players and picks to surround him with star teammates and by picking his son Bronny James in the 2024 NBA Draft, had pretty clearly stopped valuing James at the level he prefers.
James said the right things after the Lakers traded Anthony Davis, his closest friend on the roster, to Dallas for Luka Dončić without first informing him. He suggested that Dončić, rather than James, should have his name announced last with the starters — a gesture that supported the Lakers’ decision to go all in behind a younger superstar.
James played the good soldier last season, spending March in a complementary role to Dončić and Austin Reaves. The Lakers played their best basketball of the year during a late-season stretch when all three stars were healthy, breathing some credibility into their status as a contender. And when injuries kept Dončić and Reaves from being available at the start of the postseason, James helped drag the team past the favored Houston Rockets in the first round — doing so at times with his son by his side on the court in meaningful playoff minutes, an incredible flex of longevity.
Last season, James didn’t know what he wanted to do next. Now, he doesn’t know if 2026-27 will be his last season. In effect, he’s a sentence with no clear ending and just an ellipsis hinting at the future.
For the Lakers, that open-ended approach doesn’t work with the urgency they need to reconstruct the roster around Dončić and Reaves. For them, James is a massive cap number coming off the books, a pathway to fixing things. He’s no longer a part of the answer to their championship hopes.
It’s why, according to league sources granted anonymity to discuss front-office strategy, James’ name hadn’t been mentioned much in the Lakers’ team-building conversations with outside parties. James, it seemed, would need to be shoehorned into whatever else the Lakers decided to do.
Instead, James chose to grab control of these final pages of his career. He will decide where he finishes his career, which players he’ll cede control to, and which city and organization he’ll agree to sacrifice salary for.
If he chooses the Golden State Warriors, it’ll be because Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler are his peers — players he’s battled in NBA Finals and teamed up with in the Olympics. The wealth of shared experience among that foursome would make for fun basketball and wine-filled dinners.
If he chooses the Cleveland Cavaliers, it’ll be because no place is home to James like Northeast Ohio, and because the people from the same place as him appreciate him in deeper, more meaningful ways. James will get adoration wherever he goes, but the gratitude will run deepest in Cleveland.
Other suitors could appear, and each of them will have a vision to sell James.
The Lakers, of course, were in position to offer little more than a chance to fit in around Dončić and Reaves, and their efforts and energy are now pointed in different directions. If there was space for greater compromise, neither James nor the Lakers seemed all that motivated to carve it out.
So, LeBron James and the Lakers are over. James, after 23 seasons, somehow goes on.
And the Lakers will do the same without him.
