An all-revealing report from senior ESPN writer Baxter Holmes has pulled back the curtain on just how strained the relationship between Jeanie Buss and LeBron James became in the aftermath of the Lakers’ collapse during the 2021-22 season. According to team sources cited in the piece, Buss was not merely frustrated. At one point, she was seriously questioning whether James should remain the face of the franchise at all.
“Team sources told ESPN she even began to turn against the Lakers’ star player, LeBron James.”
“Jeanie privately grumbled, people close to the team say, about what she felt was James’ outsized ego and the overt control that he and Klutch Sports, which represents both James and Anthony Davis, exerted over the organization at times.”
“She didn’t like that James was considered a savior for a foundering franchise when he arrived in 2018, and that it was he who chose the Lakers rather than the team’s leadership receiving praise for landing him. Team sources have been adamant for years that James’ camp informed the Lakers as early as 2017 that he was coming to join them when he became a free agent the following year.”
“The distance between Jeanie and James widened after the Lakers traded for Russell Westbrook in July 2021, people close to the team said. The team had made the trade in an effort to appease James, but the acquisition backfired in catastrophic fashion. L.A. went 33-49 and missed the playoffs, and James seemed to wash his hands of his role in the acquisition.”
“Jeanie privately bristled about what she felt was his lack of accountability and the way James would shift blame onto others after the Westbrook trade, the people said.”
“In 2022, in the aftermath of the Westbrook trade, multiple people said Jeanie privately mused about not giving James a contract extension and, later that year, even about trading James, with the LA Clippers floated as a possibility. (This was before James received a no-trade clause in July 2024 after signing a new two-year, $104 million contract.)”
“And when the Lakers drafted James’ son Bronny with the 55th pick in the 2024 draft, Jeanie privately remarked that James should be grateful for such a gesture, but she felt that he wasn’t, people close to the team told ESPN.”
“That summer, as she discussed a new contract for James, Jeanie seemed more resigned to the fact that they’d have to do it — almost begrudgingly accepting that they’d take a massive PR hit by not doing so.”
What makes this entire saga more complicated is the underlying reality Buss may not fully accept. The Lakers needed LeBron far more than LeBron needed the Lakers in 2018. He had options across the league, from Philadelphia to New York to Houston.
The Lakers had young talent but no proven stars and no direction. James chose the Lakers for personal and business reasons, then delivered a championship once the front office acquired Davis. That title remains the franchise’s lone success in the post-Kobe era.
Since then, roster mismanagement has plagued the organization for years, with the Westbrook trade standing as the clearest example. That lingering dysfunction helps explain why Rich Paul has publicly floated ideas recently involving major roster shakeups, comments that have reportedly frustrated the Lakers internally. James is now in the final year of his contract and set to become an unrestricted free agent, while the franchise quietly transitions into the Luka Doncic era.
The uncomfortable truth is that this relationship, once mutually beneficial, has been fractured for years. What remains now is a fragile coexistence, not the partnership that once brought a championship to Los Angeles.
