LeBron James is no stranger to joining forces with a superstar teammate, as he’s partnered with plenty of All-Stars and All-NBA players over the course of his 22 years in the NBA.
However, his new arrangement with Luka Doncic is very different than any of those others. With Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, and Anthony Davis in Los Angeles, the other stars were complementary pieces to James. That’s just the natural state of things when you are the best player in the world, but at 40 years old, James no longer stakes claim to that title. James is still an All-Star caliber player, a remarkable feat at his age, but Doncic is the player in this new partnership that is closer to the title of best in the world right now.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty for Doncic to learn from James, but the on-court dynamic will be more balanced than it has been for James’ co-stars in the past. On Monday night, just prior to tip-off, James made it clear that he understands that himself. LeBron ceded the last spot in intros to Doncic for his debut (Luka says it’ll go back to LeBron getting introduced last going forward) and then delivered a message to his new star to not bother trying to fit in, and to “fit the f**k out.”
If that odd turn of phrase sounded familiar, it’s because almost exactly 10 years ago to the day (Feb. 7, rather than Feb. 11) James delivered the exact opposite message to Love in Cleveland by way of a subtweet. That was not lost on Love, who took to Instagram to post a tongue-in-cheek response saying he was “punching the air” seeing LeBron’s message to Luka.
Love has become one of the NBA’s funniest players on social media and he clearly is having some fun with this, but it is objectively funny for LeBron to flip around his legendary subtweet for a new teammate. That’s for good reason, as the way this works best in 2025 and beyond is if there’s some give-and-take on both sides of the new teammate relationship, whereas in 2015, the way to win was for stars to adapt their game to playing with LeBron rather than the other way around. Still, you wouldn’t begrudge Love if he felt some type of way seeing this, even if he gets it and had fun with it.
