LeBron James wants to spend the twilight of his Hall of Fame career contending for championships again, not going through the motions on a losing team.
In the most candid comments he has made during another discouraging season, the Los Angeles Lakers star said Wednesday he believes that he still can contribute to a top-level team and that he wants to get back to a winning environment.
“I think about the day-to-day about how we get better through the course of this season, how we get better from game to game,” James said after a 112-98 road loss to the Miami Heat. “I think about how much longer I’m going to play the game. I think about how I don’t want to finish my career playing at this level from a team aspect. I want to still be able to compete for championships because I know what I can still bring to any ballclub with the right pieces.”
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The Lakers fell to 14-21 with the loss to the Heat, dropping them 3½ games back of the final spot in the Western Conference’s play-in tournament. After it failed to reach the playoffs last season, Los Angeles sits in the West’s 13th playoff spot, 8½ games back of the top-seeded New Orleans Pelicans. Since they lost all-star center Anthony Davis to a foot injury, the Lakers are 2-5, including a blowout loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Christmas in which James single-handedly outscored his four fellow starters, all of whom were offseason acquisitions.
Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that James, who turns 38 on Friday, had championship contention on his mind in Miami, where he won two of his four titles and made four straight Finals appearances from 2011 to 2014. James also had flirted with the possibility of a return to play for the Cavaliers while in Cleveland for All-Star Weekend in February, complimenting the team’s young core and saying that the “door’s not closed” on the idea of him going home to Ohio for a third stint.
Rather than choosing to maximize his flexibility this summer, though, James signed a two-year, $97 million extension with the Lakers in August. The new contract runs through the 2023-24 season and includes a player option for 2024-25. While his game has shown signs of slippage, James remains one of the NBA’s top players as he closes in on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time scoring record, averaging 27.8 points, 8.1 rebounds and 6.6 assists this season.
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The four-time MVP said Wednesday that he “[doesn’t] have a number” in mind for how long he wants to keep playing before he retires, and he has long expressed a desire to play in the NBA alongside his 18-year-old son, Bronny, a high school senior who will be draft eligible in 2024. But James is in danger of missing the playoffs for the second consecutive season, something he hasn’t experienced since his first two years in the NBA.
“As long as my mind stays in it, I can play at this level for a minute,” said James, who is on track for his 19th all-star selection. “It’s up to my mind. My body is going to be okay. If my mind is into it, I’ll make sure my body is taken care of. I’ll continue to put in the work.”
Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka said in September the organization was willing to “do everything we can, picks included, to make deals that give us a chance to help LeBron” win another title. After an opening night loss to the Golden State Warriors, James noted that “to be completely honest, we’re not a team that’s constructed of great shooting,” and the roster’s many flaws have only been magnified in Davis’s absence. Even so, the Lakers have yet to make any trades this season to acquire the necessary athleticism, size and wing depth to keep up with the league’s best.
As the Feb. 9 trade deadline approaches, all eyes will be on the Lakers, who have a pair of future first-round picks they could use to address their short-term concerns by improving James’s supporting cast. With Davis sidelined indefinitely, though, there’s a strong argument to hold tight until the summer, when Russell Westbrook’s $47 million salary comes off the books, thereby giving the Lakers greater flexibility to pursue higher-level trade targets and free agents.
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The patient approach might be in the organization’s best long-term interests, but it would be a tough sell to James, who led the Lakers to his fourth title in 2020 before Los Angeles failed to win a series in 2021 and finished 11th in the West last season.
James’s Lakers are on pace to go 33-49 this season, which would be the worst team he has played on during his 20-year career. By comparison, the Washington Wizards won 37 games each in 2001-02 and 2002-03 during Michael Jordan’s oft-overlooked final chapter.
“I’m a winner, and I want to win,” James said. “I want to win and give myself a chance to win and still compete for championships. That’s always been my passion since I entered the league as an 18-year-old kid out of Akron, Ohio. I know it takes steps to get there. But once you get there and you know how to get there, playing basketball at this level just to be playing basketball is not in my DNA. It’s not in my DNA anymore.”
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