ESPN insider Brian Windhorst<\/a>, who’s covered James since his days in high school, not even the four-time NBA champion knows whether this will be his final season in the league:<\/p>\n“Now, as far as LeBron\u2019s future\u2014 I know there\u2019s a lot of speculation,” Windhorst said. “Based on my conversations, I honestly think they don\u2019t know. As far as I know, he\u2019s honestly going year to year. Could this be his last year? Yes. Will it be his last year? I don\u2019t know. Does he know right now? Maybe. But my interpretation is that it has not been established. He will see where he\u2019s at at the end of the year.”<\/p>\n
That puts the Lakers in a tough spot. They can’t trade him because he has a no-trade clause, so he could essentially handpick his next destination. They also can’t keep building around Doncic because of his steep $52.63 million salary.<\/p>\n
The Lakers didn’t make big moves this offseason, with Deandre Ayton being the most notable free-agency reinforcement so far. They seem to be saving up cap space for the Doncic years, but James’ contract and uncertainty continue to loom large. <\/p>\n
Will LeBron James Retire After This Year?<\/p>\n
Then again, all things considered, it’s hard to believe LeBron James would want to retire without a farewell tour. He’s never been the one not to pat himself in the back, and he’s always had a knack for movie-like storylines.<\/p>\n
Also, with Bryce Maximus, his younger son, potentially entering the league after his freshman season at Arizona, he would be given an opportunity to keep making more history and play with both of his sons.<\/p>\n
Whether the Lakers would be willing to sign him to another one-year contract and take Bryce in the NBA Draft remains to be seen, but they’ve always said that they want James to finish his season in Southern California.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, the Lakers desperately need some clarity from their former franchise player. It’s about more than him at this point, and they need to do what’s best for the organization.<\/p>\n
More Los Angeles Lakers news and rumors:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers shocked the world when they traded for Luka Doncic last season. No one, not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-128545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}