Trade & FA 2024-25:

[fifteenth]

There are three main negatives with bringing in LeBron:

1) I promise, he is worth more to the Lakers than his current on-court value. There will be no "he's over-the-hill" discount when it comes to the trade. It would take everything the Mavs have to offer to get it done, if they even have the assets to do it. I won't speculate about names, but my suspicion is that it would HURT. 

2) His age is obviously not conducive to Luka's timeline, long term. In conjunction with #1, the Mavs would lose some up and coming youth (probably most of it, honestly) to bring in someone very NOT young, probably along with some less than ideal crap from LA - the type of crap the Mavs are on the cusp of not having on their roster, finally. 

3) Kyrie didn't turn this place into a circus the way many of us thought he would, and that's great. LeBron 100% would. So, there'd be that to look forward to. 

All of those factors would have me leaning against a pursuit of LeBron, personally. I like the Mavs' current youth movement. 

Having said that, if the Mavs were somehow able to add LeBron to a core of Luka and Kyrie without losing Lively (not a given, sadly - first round pick equivalents would be part of the cost) then they'd probably be the favorites to come out of the West next year, and they might even be title favorites overnight. Can you imagine how much differently they'd be treated by opposing teams, media and even the referees? Can you imagine how freaking SMART of a team they'd be? 

It's all academic, because he just got the coach he wanted (not the one the Lakers wanted) and we've all been following him and the recent NBA enough to know that every nugget leaked about his situation is designed carefully to force the Lakers to do something he wants them to do, like pay him more than they want, or like trade up to make sure they can draft his son much too high, or something else that's stupid. He's going to retire a Laker.

Good stuff. Item #1 on your list is all I need to say "no," even if item #3 were a possibility. 

If LeBron can still take a shot at making a good playoff run on a team where he is the best player, then he should go for it.