Леброн Жэймсийн шийдвэр хүлээлтээс давж гарсангүй

LeBron James has never simply signed somewhere. In 2010, he joined the Heat because Dwyane Wade was already in place and they acquired Chris Bosh. In 2014, he returned home to Cleveland to join Kyrie Irving with the understanding that the first pick was getting flipped for Kevin Love. In 2018, he signed with the Lakers knowing Year 1 was a bridge to a blockbuster. The next summer, Anthony Davis arrived. Three free agency decisions all had one common thread: LeBron signed up for a team with a plan.

Which brings us to the summer of 2026. The popular theory around the league is that LeBron has been slow-playing his decision to see if any of his suitors could find a way to land Irving or Davis. If a team proved capable of acquiring one of his championship teammates, sources say, it might sway him in that direction.

Nobody has been able or willing to do it yet. The Irving path doesn’t seem to exist, and the Davis situation has stalled. For the first time, LeBron might have to choose between rosters as they are and not rosters as he wishes they were.

Kyrie Irving, and a Cleveland reunion

Most teams on LeBron’s list already have a point guard. There’s Tyrese Maxey in Philadelphia and some guy named Stephen Curry in Golden State. Even teams that have seemingly fallen out of the LeBron running, like Minnesota (LaMelo Ball) and New York (Jalen Brunson), have point guards in place.

Miami could use an upgrade, but there’s no theoretical salary match for Irving’s $39.5 million deal without gutting wing depth. Andrew Wiggins would have to go for any deal to work, and the Heat aren’t trading their best wing defender to add a 34-year-old point guard coming off a torn ACL.

That leaves Cleveland, where James Harden is sitting in free agency waiting for clarity on what the Cavaliers are doing.

“We’re just waiting on big fella,” Harden said, according to LeBron’s ex-teammate Channing Frye on Yahoo Sports Daily. That’s true. Harden opted out of his $42.3 million player option to negotiate a long-term extension with Cleveland at a lower annual value, and he’s willing to wait to give the team flexibility to pursue LeBron.

Gregory Shamus via Getty Images

But does LeBron want Harden? In the infamous episode of Game Over in which Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul pulled out a whiteboard to discuss LeBron’s options, he didn’t utter a single positive word about Harden.

“The negative is, and this is no offense to Harden, there’s no Darius Garland,” Paul said on his podcast. “Because LeBron loves Garland the way he loves Tyrese Maxey.”

The belief around the league is that LeBron would be more likely to choose the Cavaliers if the front office could replace Harden with Irving. The 2016 reunion would be a lovely story. But it has two problems.

Problem No. 1: The Mavericks don’t want to trade Irving.

That’s per sources, but it’s also fairly obvious. New head coach Dusty May recently compared witnessing an Irving workout to “watching Picasso paint a picture.” There’s a genuine excitement in the organization about pairing Irving with Cooper Flagg and this refurbished Dallas roster.

Problem No. 2: The Cavaliers are happy with Harden.

Swapping Harden for Irving would be asking Cleveland to trade a durable point guard for a fragile one. Irving just lost an entire season, and even before tearing his ACL, he played an average of 45 games in his previous six seasons. The last time Kyrie played 70 games, he was still a Cavalier. That was a decade ago. Harden, meanwhile, remains one of the most reliable stars in the sport, logging 70-plus games played for three seasons running. Ripping up a conference finals roster and attaching draft capital to a complex sign-and-trade with Dallas may not be the most sensible thing to do. All just to convince a 41-year-old to sign with you.

Does Cleveland need to make a deal?

All of that said, there’s no denying that Irving is a better fit next to James. Irving is a lethal shooter off the catch and doesn’t dominate touches on-ball the way Harden does. In fact, Paul said on his podcast in May that Kyrie is LeBron’s best pairing ever.

“You can’t find a better combination than those two guys,” Paul said, citing the 1-3 pick-and-roll as their lethal weapon since both of them can effectively handle and screen. And screening is where the contrast with Harden gets stark.

Over the past five years, Harden has set 1.3 on-ball screens per game, while Irving has set 4.2, ranking in the 94th percentile among guards. Irving also made direct contact with the defender on 69% of his screens, Harden on just 54%, which stands as the difference between a guard who embraces the dirty work and one who prefers not to. And even standing around, Harden remains reluctant to take catch-and-shoot 3s, preferring to catch, dribble, and take something worse.

Irving and James had a natural rhythm together that’s hard to imagine between James and Harden. Additionally, LeBron, Harden and Mitchell don’t offer enough defense, while Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen don’t offer enough spacing. Yes, the Cavaliers made the East finals. But they got there by sweating out seven-game series against a young Raptors team and a phony Pistons team before the Knicks shellacked them.

Maybe there’s another sign-and-trade suitor out there for Harden that could net different assets for the Cavaliers. The team could use an injection of new talent because, for a second year in a row, Kenny Atkinson was at the podium talking about the wide gap between his victorious opponent and Cleveland in terms of toughness, grit, and force. LeBron at 41 doesn’t close that gap. And the odds are he’s basketball-smart enough to know it.

Turning Harden into something else, and adding LeBron, could be enough to change the personality of a team that leads to greater success in the playoffs. But if the 2016 reunion with Irving isn’t on the table, LeBron would be signing up for a compromise.

Anthony Davis, and a Golden State reunion

I first reported three Sundays ago that the Warriors pursued trading Jimmy Butler for AD to lure James to the Bay Area. Thus far, the Warriors have been unable to reach a deal with the Wizards, who are signaling that they are more than happy to keep Davis. So the dream of running back the bubble title has problems too.

Problem No. 1: The Wizards don’t want to trade Davis.

“AD’s in D.C., wants to be in D.C., and we’re gonna keep him there,” Wizards general manager Will Dawkins said on SiriusXM NBA Radio during NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. “He was out here with all our guys. We had all 17 guys here, and he was a big part of what we had going on, leading our group workouts.”

The Wizards bought low on Davis with just two firsts and three seconds. Now Davis is talking like he plans to stick around. He has already teased playing 82 games next season in Washington with AJ Dybantsa winning Rookie of the Year and the team winning 40-plus games.

Bold.

Wally Skalij via Getty Images

The wrinkle is his looming contract. Davis becomes eligible for a four-year, $281 million extension on Aug. 6. There are rumblings he’s demanding that full max from Washington but would sign for less if traded to a contender. That is why not every source is convinced the Wizards will ultimately keep him.

If LeBron waits until August to make his choice, it could be that he wants to fully see exactly how the Davis situation plays out. And he’d have a decent read on it, considering they share an agent.

Problem No. 2: The Warriors are happy with Butler.

Dating back to the trade deadline, Golden State’s front office has told Butler it has no plans of trading him, according to ESPN’s Anthony Slater. That’s true. The Warriors didn’t offer Butler for Giannis in trade talks in February. Instead, they offered Draymond Green, who they were upfront with about it. But now the Warriors are in a position where Draymond is an unrestricted free agent and could always jump ship to join LeBron wherever he signs. So if Davis is acquirable, trading Butler for him means bringing in Davis and re-signing Draymond and signing LeBron. Not doing so could mean entering next season with Steph alone.

Until Davis signs an extension in Washington, the possibility remains though. It’s certainly curious that no deal has been signed when AD is already eligible to sign a three-year, $198 million deal today. Is AD just waiting until August for that fourth year of the deal? Maybe. Or maybe these forces are all negotiating with each other: The Wizards are maintaining the appearance that they want to keep Davis to increase a potential trade return, the Warriors are signaling they will keep Butler to hold their ground in negotiations, and Klutch is biding its time to either steer Davis to a contender or increase the value of his extension if he stays put.

And what does Davis want? At the end of the regular season he sure sounded like a player angling for a contender.

“I’ve been in this league a long time, and I’ve been with losing teams,” Davis said in April. “It’s very hard to be a losing team and then a championship contender, right? I think one team has only done it: Boston in ’08.”

True. The Celtics are the only team in NBA history to win fewer than 25 games then hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy the following season. The next team to do it certainly won’t be the Wizards led by Davis, Dybantsa, and Trae Young. It will be a challenge for the Wizards to even make the playoffs.

“Even when I was in New Orleans and we had two losing seasons, then we made the playoffs our third year, that, within itself, is a huge jump. Showing that you want to be on a path to winning, that’s what it takes,” Davis said. “That’s what I would like to see [in Washington]. What is our plan for winning going into next season? And how? And based on that, we’ll kind of see what happens.”

Does Golden State need to make a deal?

Unless Joe Lacob is planning on selling the team and collecting future firsts as a housewarming gift for whoever owns this team after Steph retires, there’s no point hoarding them. It’s time to compete. And if that means giving up Butler and picks to go get Davis, you do it. Steph remains an All-NBA caliber player, LeBron remains a top-20 player, Davis is still a great two-way player, and Draymond has proven he can be an All-World defender whenever he decides to flip the switch. Yes, that core plus Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis would be old. But it would also be good. Really good. Right now, that roster is just old.

There would be no bigger show in basketball. Jordan’s Bulls. The Shaq and Kobe Lakers. The Heatles. The juggernaut Warriors. And now, the Olden State Warriors, headlined by Steph and LeBron, the two defining players of their generation.

With Yaxel Lendeborg, Brandin Podziemski, Gui Santos and Will Richard around them, there’d be enough youth to keep the whole thing upright throughout the season while offering upside for April and beyond. All the Warriors would really need is to get into June healthy and their experience, intelligence, and star power could give them an edge against anybody.

Maybe the Warriors just don’t believe Davis is worth the cost. Maybe the Warriors think LeBron will choose them even without him. Maybe they believe Butler can return and make it work.

Butler wasn’t a perfect fit prior to his injury anyway. His connective playmaking already overlapped with Draymond’s role on offense, alongside his passive streaks and his unwillingness to shoot 3s at volume. Add LeBron and the overlap becomes a pileup. Already, Draymond has said he’d stand in the corner and do his best P.J. Tucker impression if LeBron joined Golden State. Is Butler supposed to stand in the opposite corner? History suggests he’d rather burn the Golden Gate Bridge.

That’s before getting to the fact that Butler is recovering from a torn ACL at age 37, with no guarantee he returns with the same burst off the dribble or defensive versatility. Even if he does, Golden State needs to rack up wins early in the season just to reach the playoffs.

Waiting half the season for Butler to return, then hoping he immediately resembles his old self, requires a lot of wishful thinking. And if things don’t work out, it could be another year wasted. LeBron and Steph do not have another year to waste.

That said, Davis is no guarantee to stay on the floor either, so it’d be understandable if the Warriors aren’t all sold on adding him to the mix. As far as I’ve heard, there aren’t any other teams pursuing LeBron that have interest in Davis either. That should come as no surprise given that Davis has appeared in just 47 games per season since winning the 2020 title, his jump shot has abandoned him, he isn’t the all-world defender he was in his prime, and he still doesn’t want to play center. Add the hefty extension he’s due, and there’s plenty of reason his market was thin when the Mavericks shopped him around, plenty of reason for the skepticism about Washington paying him the full max, and plenty of reason no known team beyond Golden State has bothered to call.

But if it’s not Davis, then who: Trey Murphy? League sources say the Pelicans have resisted all trade offers so far and hope to compete next season.

Michael Porter Jr.? Sources say that Steve Kerr didn’t want MPJ in February, and there is little reason to believe he would want him now.

Got any other ideas? The Warriors can trade up to two unprotected firsts, one protected first, and four swaps, so they have some valuable assets to play with. But if Davis isn’t available, it’s slim pickings out there right now.

Golden State can always trade Butler later. Maybe the Warriors wait until the deadline and hope another star becomes available. If not, they roll the dice on Butler’s recovery. But that would leave LeBron choosing Golden State based on what the Warriors might become halfway through the season rather than what they are today. And for now, what they are is not enough.

No perfect situation

“There’s no perfect situation,” Paul said last week on Game Over. “But my thing is, I’d rather have no expectations and then get a surprise than have all this expectation and then be disappointed.”

Through this process, his advice to LeBron has been to “don’t just value the paper.” In other words, players naturally believe they can fix everything themselves. But the reality of a situation only becomes clear once the season is rolling on. “When the battle actually starts, and you start to see the tendencies, you start to see habits, you start to see how things operate on a daily basis,” Paul said. “It’s tough to tell from this seat, you actually have to get in the mud and get your boots dirty.”

Those words apply to every option that LeBron has. He might believe he can compensate for Joel Embiid’s lack of durability, or bring the toughness that Cleveland has lacked, or add the shooting that Miami needs, or be the final piece of the puzzle for Golden State. But LeBron is no longer a player whose mere presence can turn a lottery team into a championship contender. Those days are long gone.

So, LeBron has waited for a team to fulfill his wishes, nothing has materialized, and now his own agent is using the language of someone setting low expectations.

If LeBron wanted to sign with Miami, wouldn’t he have done so already? What else would he really be waiting for? The Heat already made their big move for Giannis, and offer stability with an organization, city, coach, and front office that he spent four years with and won two rings. But he wasn’t happy when he left Miami in 2014, they don’t have a lot of 3-point shooting, and Giannis hasn’t finished a season healthy since winning a title five years ago.

The logic with Philadelphia is similar. The Sixers have top-end talent with Jaylen Brown joining Maxey and Embiid. Even if Embiid plays zero games, the roster is set up to be competitive with upside young players like VJ Edgecombe and Labaron Philon. But Embiid is as injury prone as any player in the league, and they certainly would need him to be healthy for three months to have any chance of winning the championship. At this point of Embiid’s career, that might be pure fantasy.

Maybe LeBron shocks the world and joins the defending champion Knicks, despite how much he’d get called a ring-chaser. Maybe the Timberwolves aren’t actually out of the picture and he goes there to join Anthony Edwards. Maybe he retires, though he certainly doesn’t sound like a guy ready to call it quits.

“Why are we trying to force a narrative of it’s time to retire?” LeBron said at Fanatics Fest. “You look at guys like Bruce Springsteen and some of the greatest musicians, the Stones, they’ve been on tour for 50, 60 years. So, I’m just trying to squeeze as much of the juice out of it as possible.”

Every time LeBron has made a decision, the team he joined could promise him something. This time, nobody’s promising anything. For the first time in LeBron’s career, he’s not choosing a plan built for him. He’s choosing which flaws he can live with.