The dust has largely settled in 2025 free agency and many around the league are still wondering: What in the world is going on with LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers?
It’s a question that seemed to be answered last week when the 40-year-old picked up his $52.6 million player option to re-join the Lakers for next season. But all that clarity went out the window the moment his agent Rich Paul paired the news with an extended statement about the need for urgency in LakerLand.
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“LeBron wants to compete for a championship,” Paul told ESPN. “He knows the Lakers are building for the future. He understands that, but he values a realistic chance of winning it all. We are very appreciative of the partnership that we’ve had for eight years with Jeanie [Buss] and Rob [Pelinka] and consider the Lakers as a critical part of his career.
“We understand the difficulty in winning now while preparing for the future. We do want to evaluate what’s best for LeBron at this stage in his life and career. He wants to make every season he has left count, and the Lakers understand that, are supportive and want what’s best for him.”
Look East, LeBron. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
(Harry How via Getty Images)
Well, so much for that urgency. The Lakers’ response has been so tepid it’s hard to even categorize it as a response. For one, the team still hasn’t even officially announced or publicized the return of the all-time leading scorer and second-team All-NBA member. Then they let Dorian Finney-Smith walk to rival Houston. They whiffed on Brook Lopez, who went to the other Los Angeles team, and still haven’t added a center.
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Maybe LeBron saw the writing on the wall and acted first to get in front of the Lakers’ imminent apathy. Paul made it known, telling ESPN’s Dave McMenamin earlier this week, that four teams have inquired with the Klutch Sports CEO about trading for James. Engineering a trade, with his no-trade clause in hand, may have been the plan all along.
Should LeBron’s goal truly be to win a championship, then the calculus is simple: He needs to head East. More specifically, he should take his talents back to Cleveland, where the road to the Finals is clearer than ever.
The West’s Grand Slam
The West has eaten the East’s lunch time and time again this century. Since 2000, in head-to-head matchups, the Western Conference has won the majority of inter-conference games in a staggering 23 of the last 26 seasons, according to Basketball-Reference tracking. The final tally has the West earning 6,316 wins against the East compared to just 4,997 victories on the other side. It’s unfathomable how lopsided the conferences are. The East could go 1,318-0 going forward and they’d still have a worse record against its conference foe since 2000.
A development that the ever-observant LeBron has assuredly noticed, the rich are indeed getting richer.
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Over the past few months the Western Conference has clinched what I’ll call the Conference Grand Slam — winning the regular season, the NBA Finals, the Draft Lottery and more recently, the free agency window (more on that later).
After the clean sweep, the West has put itself head and shoulders above its easterly foes. As of Wednesday morning, the three most likely teams to win the championship — OKC, Houston and Denver — all hail from one conference, per BetMGM odds. Which, if it holds, would be the first time since 2008 that the three heaviest favorites entering the season belong to the same conference, per SportsOddsHistory.com tracking.
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Knowing how cavernous that gap is now, it would be understandable if both James and the Lakers surveyed the landscape and came to the conclusion that, without forgoing long-term assets, the purple-and-gold simply can’t compete at the highest levels together.
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But one team in the East can. That’s his former squad, the Cleveland Cavaliers — where James can end his career where it all began.
Cleveland still sits atop the broken East
It wasn’t long ago when the Boston Celtics were thought to be building an enduring reign atop the NBA, but then the 2025 playoffs happened. In Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Knicks, Jayson Tatum crumbled to the hardwood with a ruptured Achilles. The Celtics lost the series and immediately vacated their seat among the NBA’s inner circle.
But it wasn’t just Tatum and Boston who took a big step back. Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard and Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton suffered Achilles tears in the playoffs as well, all but removing those three clubs from serious title contention in 2025-26. Though Milwaukee added Myles Turner, it did so at a historic cost of stretch-and-waiving Lillard’s $113 million contract over the next five seasons. Meanwhile, the reigning East champs pushed their 2025 first-round pick a year down the road and largely sat out free agency, presumably with the goal of maximizing their 2026 first-round pick that they deftly reacquired from New Orleans during the NBA Finals.
The opening is there for Cleveland now that Boston has dismantled its championship roster. The Celtics’ difficult looming cap decisions were made easy by Tatum’s injury. They traded Jrue Holiday’s long-term contract to the Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for Anfernee Simons’ expiring contract and then dumped Kristaps Porzingis’ salary on the Atlanta Hawks in another cost-saving measure. Together, shedding the Holiday and Porzingis contracts lopped $144 million off the Celtics’ 2025-26 total salary and tax bill. Boston effectively waved the white flag.
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Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, the Bucks hit the nuclear option in the wake of Lillard’s injury. Once Brook Lopez left Giannis Antetokounmpo’s side and headed West to join the Clippers in free agency, it ensured that none of the Greek Freak’s starting teammates from the 2021 championship team remain with the club. Milwaukee pivoted by waiving Lillard and bringing in Turner at four years and $107 million to help rescue a decimated roster.
It remains to be seen whether the Turner deal will stifle a possible Antetokounmpo trade demand. Even if a request isn’t made, Milwaukee doesn’t have a title-worthy supporting cast around Antetokounmpo. They’ve taken a step back even though they’re trying. Elsewhere, the Orlando Magic and Atlanta Hawks appear eager to crash the East contender party with their moves, but the leap would have to be massive; neither team even had a winning record last season.
The case for the Cavs going for LeBron is simple: They won 64 games last season, but looked severely flawed in yet another disappointing postseason run. As LeBron’s former Cleveland teammate Channing Frye presciently said on an Oddball episode back in March, the current iteration of the Cavs doesn’t measure up to the LeBron Cavs teams simply because they lack what Frye termed as “a bully” on the floor.
What better way to solve that problem than to bring back the bully that led the Cavs to the 2016 championship himself? It’s possible, but it will take some heavy lifting. Because of the new trade-restrictive CBA, the Cavs re-acquiring James will likely necessitate additional teams being involved.
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A four-team framework proposed by cap guru Eric Pincus from B/R is the most intriguing option, looping in Houston and Utah as trade partners. The bones of the trade are as follows: Cleveland sends Darius Garland to Utah for Walker Kessler; Houston receives Finney-Smith in a sign-and-trade; the Lakers add Jarrett Allen and De’Andre Hunter; the Lakers move LeBron and his son Bronny back home to Cleveland. Various picks and salary cap filler would certainly be included to grease the wheels, but that’s the basic structure.
Yes, it’s a mammoth trade, but one that checks a ton of boxes for the respective teams and stays within the bounds of complicated cap rules. As I wrote in this space back in May, Allen would be a perfect high-flying rim protector for Luka Dončić. Back then, I surmised that Cleveland would only entertain an Allen departure if they got bounced early from the playoffs. Which they did. For the Lakers, adding Hunter and Allen in a trade would explain why they haven’t pursued top wings and centers in free agency.
As for Cleveland, trading for Bully ‘Bron solves two other pressing issues. Look, the team is paying its undersized backcourt, Garland and Donovan Mitchell, an astounding $276 million over the next three seasons, which is simply untenable. As we saw clearly this postseason, having two weak defenders on the perimeter will doom the Cavs in the modern “weak link” NBA that marginalizes one-way players. Trading Garland to a team long desperate for a lead point guard, the Jazz, would quell that concern.
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Secondly, James’ impending retirement could open up cap space for Kessler, who is due an extension off of his meager $4.9 salary in 2025-26. It’s a dream scenario for Cleveland. How many All-NBA caliber players can they acquire without long-term money attached? It’s LeBron, and … that’s it.
The big picture also justifies the LeBron-to-Cleveland move. For LeBron or any West player seeking a championship, they have to head East.
The West is only getting better
In almost comical fashion, the East-West divide widened on draft lottery night. Dallas leapfrogged 10 teams to win the rights to draft Cooper Flagg, one of the most accomplished freshmen to ever make the jump to the league.
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It’s not just that Flagg represents an elite talent going West. He’s joining an unusually potent club at the top of the draft. With a record of 39-43, the Mavericks are the winningest team to select (and retain) their No. 1 overall pick since the 1982 Lakers. (For the historians out there: yes, the 41-41 Orlando Magic drafted Chris Webber in 1993, but traded him to 34-48 Golden State for the No. 3 pick, Anfernee Hardaway, and three first-round picks.)
If that’s not enough draft luck going the Western Conference’s way, the San Antonio Spurs — already loaded with Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox — soared six spots on lottery night to snag Dylan Harper, another top prospect at the college level. The team already struck gold last year, drafting Stephon Castle, who won Rookie of the Year. With the highly underrated big Luke Kornet joining the squad from Boston, San Antonio is poised for a breakout season on the back of its internal development.
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Kornet’s arrival is symbolic of another larger trend in the NBA. During this free agency window, we’ve continued to see the Great Western Migration of NBA talent. From the East, the Western Conference added Cam Johnson, Ty Jerome, Jrue Holiday, Luke Kornet, D’Angelo Russell, Brook Lopez and Jusuf Nurkic — seven players who are considered positive impact players going forward, according to Estimated Plus-Minus ratings. The East? They brought in just four from the Western Conference: Desmond Bane, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Luka Garza and CJ McCollum.
Zoom out and the picture gets even bleaker for the East. The 16 players that switched conferences to the East are collectively far worse than the 15 players that went the other way. According to EPM data from DunksAndThrees.com, West-to-East players registered an aggregated MINUS-14.6 EPM while the West saw that same total check in at plus-5.3. Said another way, the caliber of players that the West took from the East were 20 points better per 100 possessions than the ones that the East took from the West.
West adding talent
And this doesn’t even consider the Antetokounmpo situation looming over the league. If Antetokounmpo asks out of Milwaukee in the near future, the asset-rich teams that seem to be in prime position to trade for the two-time MVP are in the West: San Antonio and Houston. Of course, Antetokounmpo could force his way into easterly locales like New York and Atlanta, but it’s hard to see Milwaukee preferring that trade route compared to what some West teams can offer. One detail that could give Atlanta a leg up: the Hawks possess Milwaukee’s unprotected 2026 first-round pick swap from New Orleans. If the Bucks want to bottom out next season, they’ll have to get Atlanta’s participation in a deal.
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If LeBron doesn’t head back to Cleveland and Milwaukee reroutes Antetokounmpo to the West soon, the East’s outlook will wear the “Leastern” Conference label in near perpetuity. OKC could be building a dynasty and the only teams that seem to be daring to challenge them are coming from their own conference.
While we’re here, it’s downright nonsensical that we’re sticking with an antiquated playoff system of requiring an equal eight teams from each conference when the East-West imbalance continues to spiral out of control. The obvious fix for the blatant league inequity is moving to seeding the playoffs 1-16 league-wide regardless of conference affiliation, something that Adam Silver is reportedly a big proponent of. However, such a rule change would require a heavy majority of owners voting for the change and it’s hard to see East owners going for it.
Maybe the East-West divide naturally thins out when top players recognize the easier path to the Finals and decide to flee the West in the coming years. Ever the pioneer in player movement, James could walk down that road in the coming days and show everyone the way. If the league’s eldest player wants to win a fifth championship while he’s still at an All-NBA level, it’s clear that the loaded Western Conference is no country for old men.
