LeBron Says He Struggled Recruiting Players To Cleveland But Doesn’t Think It’ll ‘Be That Hard’ In L.A.

LeBron James hasn’t been able to convince many other stars to join him in free agency since his time in Miami. When he returned to Cleveland in 2014, the Cavs already had Kyrie Irving and dealt for Kevin Love, but in his four years back in Cleveland he was never able to get any other stars or even many top veterans to join him in The Land to chase a title.

In Los Angeles, James will be looking to buck that trend and hopes having a more desirable destination helping him do some recruiting can yield better results than he had in Cleveland. However, as Kevin Durant has explained recently, there are more issues than just location for players when playing with James in terms of the attention and, at times, lack of appreciation that can come with it.

Still, James expects his efforts this coming summer to go better than they did in Cleveland as he recently explained to Rachel Nichols that he was always recruiting with the Cavs, just to no avail.

It’s not a tremendous surprise that NBA players weren’t all that interested in playing in Cleveland, even with LeBron, but beyond that part of the issue is that Cleveland never really had a tremendous amount of room. James notes he never had issues getting players to Miami, as veterans were willing to take minimums to play a role on a contender.

The difference in Los Angeles is that James is now tasked with bringing another superstar to the Lakers this summer — something they couldn’t do with Paul George this summer. Whether that’s one of the top free agents like Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, or Kevin Durant, or get someone like Anthony Davis to push their way to L.A. by forcing a trade. Whatever the case, this summer will be the deciding factor in whether the Lakers become a true contender for a title while they have LeBron, because they have massive amounts of space and if they strike out on the very top players, the alternative would be a mad scramble on the trade market.