{"id":788254,"date":"2026-07-09T02:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T02:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788254\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T02:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T02:30:13","slug":"insider-says-2-of-warriors-lebron-challengers-are-out-of-the-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788254\/","title":{"rendered":"Insider Says 2 of Warriors’ LeBron Challengers Are Out of the Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last week, there has been some speculation that 10 teams have a shot at LeBron James, and six of them are closer to the front than the others. <\/p>\n

Those six were identified as the Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets. <\/p>\n

ClutchPoints NBA insider Brett Siegel believes two of those teams are out of the race. <\/p>\n

Siegel said<\/a> on his Clutch Scoops show that the Timberwolves and Nuggets are not getting James. He believes all of the other four teams still have a shot at him. <\/p>\n

Siegel added that he believes the Cavs are the front-runners. <\/p>\n

Warriors Have Some Advantages over Remaining 4 Teams<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest advantage the Warriors have over the other teams is the Bay Area’s proximity to James’ Los Angeles home. The other three teams are in the Eastern Time Zone. <\/p>\n

The next advantage the Warriors have is easier access to the full non-taxpayer mid-level exception of $15 million. <\/p>\n

The last advantage is simply how fun it would be to play with Stephen Curry. James and Curry had great chemistry in the 2024 Olympics, and James has said in the past<\/a> that Curry is the one player he’d like to play with. <\/p>\n

But the Things Working Against the Dubs Make Them More of a Long Shot<\/p>\n

The major issue the Warriors have is the quality of their roster is weaker than any of the other three teams. <\/p>\n

If it were just that, maybe the Dubs could lure James by trading for Anthony Davis for Jimmy Butler, despite the potentially huge draft pick cost<\/a>. But two other potentially big issues are a) how a move to the Warriors will be perceived and b) the narrative pull of playing with the other teams. <\/p>\n

Some would criticize James if he went to play with the team he had his most important series win against in 2016. <\/p>\n

Though the Warriors are coming off missing the playoffs, the Curry-Draymond-Kerr core has won four championships, so helping Golden State win another wouldn’t be as special as helping the Cavs win a second or helping the 76ers win their first title since 1983. <\/p>\n

My guess is James has bigger concerns about the Warriors roster than any of us know. Outside of Curry and Butler (when healthy), it’s not a roster that would sell the four-time MVP. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Heat have Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bam Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins; the 76ers have Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey; and the Cavaliers have Donovan Mitchell, James Harden (assuming he re-signs with the Cavs) and Evan Mobley. <\/p>\n

The Warriors’ poor roster decisions over the last several years have made it difficult for any star player to choose them. <\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the last week, there has been some speculation that 10 teams have a shot at LeBron James,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-788254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788254","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=788254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}