LeBron's 'Sacrifices' for Luka, AR, Lakers Weren't Acknowledged Enough, Says LAL Exec in New Rumors

Not everybody within the Los Angeles Lakers' franchise felt LeBron James was treated completely fairly ahead of his departure from the organization this summer.

"Honestly, I don't know if we did enough to acknowledge the sacrifices he made in being willing to give the keys over to Luka [Dončić] and [Austin Reaves] this year," a team staffer told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne. "Of course he has a big ego and people can say what they want about that. But he's also the No. 1 scorer in the history of basketball and he really tried to do what was best for the team to win."

A reunion may have been possible.

According to that report, "After the season, sources close to James said the most important factor in him re-signing would be how the Lakers approached him. He might have been willing to take a pay cut from the $52.6 million he'd made the season before, sources said, if the Lakers explained how they planned to reallocate the money. They never did, and James never made himself available to meet. He had been a priority enough times in his career to know when he wasn't one."

The Lakers have moved like a team ready to build itself around Dončić for well over a year now.

There was the attempt to trade for rim-running center Mark Williams immediately after Dončić was acquired (which ultimately fell through). There were the lack of extension talks with James ahead of the summer, while those discussions were held with both Dončić and Reaves (the former signed a three-year, $160.34 million extension last summer, the latter a four-year, $185 million deal this summer). There was the fact that the Lakers aggressively approached free agency in the past week, pulling off a sign-and-trade to land Walker Kessler while also signing Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Collin Sexton and Jaden Hardy in free agency.

That money would have perhaps otherwise gone into signing James to a max deal. Instead, the future Hall of Famer is mulling his options in free agency and likely will be taking a major pay cut on his next team.

It ends an eight-year relationship that included a bubble championship during the COVID-19 pandemic, six playoff berths and countless records broken by LeBron. It was James' longest consecutive tenure with a team (his two stints with the Cavaliers totaled 11 seasons but were broken up into a seven- and four-year tenure).

It ended in somewhat anticlimactic fashion, even if the writing was on the wall the moment the Lakers landed Dončić. Now we wait to see where James will choose to end his career.