After the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Denver Nuggets on Monday night and got sent home from the NBA playoffs, superstar LeBron James, who has been the face of the league for the better part of 20 years, teased the possibility of retiring before next season.
“We’ll see what happens going forward. … I don’t know, I don’t know,” James told reporters in the postgame press conference after being swept four games to none by the Nuggets in the Western Conference finals. “I’ve got a lot to think about, to be honest. … Just with me personally going forward with the game of basketball, I’ve got a lot to think about.”
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ESPN reporters followed up with James to try and attain clarity over his statements. “When you say you got to think about stuff, what thread should we be pulling on that?” they asked him, per Dave McMenamin.
“If I want to continue to play,” James responded.
LeBron James to ESPN on his thought process going into the offseason:
Q: When you say you got to think about stuff, what thread should we be pulling on that?
A: “If I want to continue to play.”
Q: As in next year?
A: “Yeah.”
Q: You would walk away?
A: “I got to think about it.”— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) May 23, 2023
The cryptic answers came as a surprise to most NBA fans, as evidenced by the frantic responses on social media. James, 38, was playing at a level unprecedented for someone in their 20th season in the league, and he makes no secret of his love for the Lakers, the NBA, and the game of basketball.
But James was also forthright about playing through an ankle injury during the Lakers’ surprising postseason run, and the significant miles he has put on his body through two decades of regular seasons and many deep playoff runs eventually will take a toll even on the game’s greatest ironman. To put it bluntly: When he does announce his retirement, people can no longer say they didn’t see it coming.
Many NBA fans speculated that James’s postgame comments were the beginning of a negotiating tactic meant for the Lakers’ front office. With the threat of his retirement, the Lakers’ shot callers would likely feel more desperate to go all-in on win-now moves for the 2023-2024 season than if they felt they had all the leverage.
For a player and businessman known to be strategic with his words, it would not be outside the realm of possibility for James to know what he’s doing or even for him just to be caught up in the moment after a loss.
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He has also been vocal about wanting to play in the association with his eldest son, Bronny James, who recently declared to play college basketball at the University of Southern California. Should he still desire this dream, James would have to wait for at least this next year for his son to be eligible for the draft and then play an additional season to share an NBA court with his son.
The all-time NBA scoring leader turns 39 this December. He has likely accomplished every one of his wildest dreams in the game of basketball and feels he has nothing left to prove to anyone. And yet James’s comments Monday night start a new chapter for the superstar, the ending of which, if we can believe his words, only time will tell.
