LeBron James has been showered with plenty of praise during his 23-year NBA career, but he has also faced a whole lot of criticism. Notably, James has been blamed for starting the NBA’s superteam era by joining forces with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Miami Heat in 2010.
A host of former NBA players have expressed their displeasure over James switching teams multiple times over the course of his career to team up with superstars. They have pointed out that they never did it, but Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas made it clear during an appearance on the Crossover Podcast that they didn’t because they couldn’t.
“Now, the reason why we couldn’t, keyword, we couldn’t change teams,” Thomas said. “I was the president of the Players’ Association, and during my period of time, the whole fight was for free agency. We all wanted to be able to leave, change, and go to other places, but we couldn’t. So when them older guys, my age bracket, start telling you, ‘Oh, I never would have changed teams,’ they couldn’t.
“They couldn’t leave the place that you were drafted,” Thomas continued. “… Now the fact that LeBron left, for older guys like myself, I was happy to see him have the type of freedom to move around, because so many great players got stuck in organizations, got stuck with bad management, got stuck in places where they couldn’t excel and management never got the blame.
“And so during that period of time, we was fighting for players to leave,” Thomas added.
James was able to make that decision to leave thanks to the battles fought by those who came before him. Thomas is happy to see that the 41-year-old had control over his career in a way that players of his era didn’t.
Now, one modern example that often gets brought up to criticize James is the late great Kobe Bryant. Bryant spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, but Thomas reminded everyone he wanted to leave, too.
“You got your little computer with you,” Thomas said. “You talking about, ‘Oh, [Michael] Jordan didn’t leave. Kobe didn’t leave.’ Kobe said to the Lakers, ‘If you don’t get rid of [Shaquille O’Neal], I’m leaving.’… I’m a Kobe fan, too. But we tend to not tell the truth about some situations.”
While it’s unclear whether Bryant made the Lakers choose between him and Shaquille O’Neal in 2004, what we do know is that he was considering leaving. He was a free agent and even had a meeting with Jerry West, who was the general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies at the time.
West, who previously played for the Lakers and was their general manager, told Bryant he should stay, and that’s what he did. O’Neal, who had fallen out with him, ended up being shipped out, as he was traded to the Heat.
That move led to Bryant becoming the undisputed top dog and having the stage all for himself. While that was what he wanted, the Lakers didn’t have much success for the next couple of years, and he’d ask for a trade in 2007. Bryant was almost traded to the Detroit Pistons, but turned them down.
Bryant was said to want to go to the Chicago Bulls, but no deal ever materialized. He was eventually convinced to stay and went on to retire as a Laker, but there is no denying that there was a very real chance he wouldn’t have been a one-team man.
So, you can’t really use Bryant to fire shots at James. You can dislike what he did, but ultimately, there was nothing wrong with it.
