At age 41, a significant number of fans and experts believe that it may be time for the Lakers to move on from LeBron James. Rich Paul, who is LeBron James’ agent, seems to believe otherwise.
When James had to exercise his $52.6 million player-option this summer, a prevailing opinion in the NBA world was that James was taking up too much cap space and that he should have re-signed with the team at a lower number to give them financial flexibility to make trade moves and free-agency signings around Luka Doncic.
Rich Paul recently recorded an episode of his own podcast ‘Game Over’ with Max Kellerman and simplified the contract situation to clear the misconception about James.
“In my opinion, when you have that level of talent, you still have a puncher’s chance. Now, as an organization, you have to decide what this year is going to be,” said Paul with a message for the Lakers.
“That has to be, or it should be communicated to, you know, I’m not going to say the entire team, but it should be communicated to definitely your star guys in terms of ‘Hey, we’re probably not going to be extremely active at the trade deadline for these reasons. Obviously, we got star players signed back.”
There were reports that James would be monitoring the Lakers’ progress to decide on his future while actively being excluded from them. This essentially confirms that James and his representation are indeed keeping close tabs on the Lakers’ front office moves.
“Most people think, ‘Oh, well, we would be a lot better if LeBron wasn’t making 54 million.’ Well, that’s not necessarily true. They probably would have had like 37 million of space if he wasn’t at the number. And anything under that would just have been like get to mid-level. So it’s some of these things people don’t know the entire business,” Paul further added.
Max Kellerman went on to explain what Paul was trying to say. When James signed his two-year extension, the Lakers had his full bird rights. Therefore, they could offer him a contract of up to five years with an annual 8% salary increase and go beyond the cap space threshold to sign him within the prescribed limits.
The same reason why players like Luka Doncic and Trae Young were anticipating much larger contracts with the Mavericks and the Hawks till last season. It’s because those respective teams had their bird rights to potentially offer them supermax extensions.
Hence, if James had not picked up his player option, the Lakers would have only opened up approximately $37 million in their cap space. And James was not in a position to demand more money from any other team as well.
Considering that James wants to retire in LA and the Lakers hope to see him retire in their jersey, had James re-signed on a lower number, their front office would not have had many options in the free-agent market to target as a solid improvement to the roster. This is what Paul seems to be pointing towards.
“That’s you having the players’ bird rights. And so that’s that’s if you can find that talent and you have their bird rights, and then you have other areas to feel you can fill that. Yeah, that’s the incentive for having the bird rights,” Paul added after Kellerman explained the rationale behind bird rights.
But the point I’m making is you still have a puncher’s chance, [if you communicate]” said Paul in conclusion to Kellerman.
Rich Paul seems to essentially believe that had the Lakers communicated their plans better to James, they could have found a better solution. And upon his assessment, the Lakers were not necessarily in a position to benefit if James did not pick up his $52.6 million player option.
Do you think Paul is right? If James had re-signed with the team on a lower salary, would the Lakers have benefited? Let us know your opinions in the comments section.
