Now that the 2018 NBA Draft has come and gone, the basketball world is sitting back and waiting to see what LeBron James plans to do next season. Cleveland’s star forward possess the option to hit the free agent market this summer, and if he does, a courting process would occur all across the league for his services.
The thing is James doesn’t necessarily have to opt out of his deal, as he has a player option for next season with the Cavaliers that would pay him $35.6 million. Additionally, if he does opt out, Cleveland would be right there in the running to get him to sign another deal. There’s no guarantee he returns to the team, of course, but completely ruling out a return to the Cavs would be a bit premature.
Adding to the intrigue about James’ future is a report via Ryen Russillo of ESPN, who appeared on SportsCenter alongside Scott Van Pelt after the Draft ended. According to Russillo, James is still doing his usual summer practice of trying to recruit talent to Cleveland.
“All the arrows point to him bolting, but I know for a fact LeBron is trying to figure out if other stars around the league wanna come play with him, but come play with him in Cleveland, first,” Russillo said. “So whatever happened tonight, there was no pick, there was no move — other than Kawhi [Leonard] being traded for the eighth pick, that wasn’t gonna happen — there was nothing that was gonna happen tonight that was gonna make you think we have an answer to the LeBron question, but I have been alone on this, he may end up moving on, but I know for a fact LeBron is still trying to find a way to make it happen in Cleveland. I just don’t know if anybody wants to go there with him.”
Figuring out how to define a “star” in this context is tough — would James be happy with a player like, say, Kemba Walker, or does he want Paul George or Leonard to be his running mate in Cleveland? And if the answer is the former, how would the Cavs manage to make that work?
At the very least, this lays out a path for Cleveland to convince James to stick around. It remains to be seen if the Cavs are able to make this happen — especially if the reports that first-round pick Collin Sexton is indeed untouchable in a trade are true — but it stands to reason that Koby Altman is aware of this and knows what he has to do.
