Lakers: NBA Expert Wonders If LeBron James Signing With LA In 2018 Was A Mistake

Where else could LeBron have gone and thrived?

As your 14-21 Los Angeles Lakers continue their depressing downward spiral with their oft-injured best player, Anthony Davis, injured again, LeBron James finally seems to be looking for an exit, at least if his comments yesterday are any indication.

Yossi Gozlan of HoopsHype takes a look back at the 18-time All-Star forward's options in free agency circa 2018, and wonders if it may have behooved him to join another club instead of Los Angeles.

James did win his fourth NBA title (and fourth Finals MVP award) with the Lakers during his second season with the club, in 2019-20, but since then, the team has only qualified for the playoffs in one of its last two seasons, and looks likely to miss the postseason again this year.

Gozlan does note that James took a meeting with the Philadelphia 76ers, then anchored by Joel Embiid and Klutch Sports client Ben Simmons. The Denver Nuggets, led by promising young center Nikola Jokic, were reportedly also angling for a meeting, though James never took one. At this point, Jokic was not yet even an All-Star, though he appeared to be well on that trajectory even then, and would named to his first All-Star team the following season.

Would pairing James with the indestructible two-time reigning league MVP in Jokic, or the surprisingly-durable two-time MVP runner-up in Embiid, have been a better fit for The Chosen One than his current pairing with Davis?

Absolutely.

James also could have stayed in Cleveland, a team that now is looking like one of the East's bright stars, but at the time looked pretty depleted, with no clear road to bolstering its personnel. Would James's outsized impact in the front office compelled any of these new teams into making "win-now" deals as disastrous as the Russell Westbrook trade he at the very least thought was a good idea last summer? It's hard to say, but certainly possible.