After LeBron James announced that he was joining the Philadelphia 76ers, it’s clear that, once again, the NBA’s all-time scoring leader never had any serious interest in joining the Golden State Warriors.
James agreed to a two-year,
$8M contract, with a player option in his second year. That is a dirt-cheap deal for a 41-year-old who was still good enough last season to lift a Los Angeles Lakers team missing both Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves to a first-round victory. He’ll join former MVP Joel Embiid, All-Star Tyrese Maxey, the No. 3 overall pick in 2025, VJ Edgecombe, and newly-acquired Jaylen Brown. Perhaps most important, he will not play with Paul George.
Did the Warriors ever have a chance to land James? The answer is, almost certainly not. Their pitch was essentially, come play with Steph Curry, with whome James won a gold medal at the 2024 Olympics. Beyond that…golf? A short flight to Los Angeles? Getting to meet Apple’s Tim Cook?
The 76ers had a very active offseason, trading for Brown and adding forward Dean Wade, now likely a backup, and Anfernee Simons, a 38% career three-point shooter who averaged more than 20 points from 2022-24. The Warriors re-signed a number of injury-prone veterans from last year’s 37-win team and drafted Yaxel Lendeborg at No. 11. When Draymond Green opted out of his $27.7M player option for next season, the team used their added financial flexibility to do…pretty much nothing, beyond giving Al Horford and De’Anthony Melton small raises.
ESPN’s Anthony Slater summarized the underwhelming Warriors pitch:
The Warriors have a more limited roster and a tougher path to contention than other competitors…If James is still prioritizing a chase for a fifth ring, it was far more reasonable for him to look East rather than join an older core that enters the season hobbled and won only 37 games last season…Plus, they didn’t make an offseason trade to make it more appealing. LeBron decided elsewhere, and the Warriors have been under the belief it was trending that way for weeks.
Another reason to believe that James was never going to join the Warriors is that it’s not the first time he’s declined to do so. In February 2024, the Warriors called the Lakers about trading for James, only to have James’ agent, Rich Paul, tell them James wasn’t interested in being traded. In the summer of 2024, James declined his 2024-25 and became a free agent, only to resign with the Warriors. In the summer of 2025, he picked up his player option rather than become a free agent.
One cannot help but think of an important life lesson from Ron Livingston and the iconic women of “Sex And The City”: He’s just not that into you.
Joe Lacob needs to listen to Miranda here, when she learns the guy she’s seeing just isn’t that into her.
“This is the most liberating thing I’ve ever heard! Think of how much time and therapy [ed: and roster-building opportunities] I could have saved if I had known this!”
The Warriors have known for weeks that it was unlikely that James would choose their team. Still, they sat by the phone, crossing their fingers and blowing off phone calls from DeMar DeRozan and leaving NBA general managers on read. It’s possible that Mike Dunleavy, Junior’s offseason activity was primarily devoted to repeatedly writing “LBJ + MDJ” in his Lisa Frank notebook with a unicorn on the front and drawing hearts around it.
So now the Warriors’ attention will shift to bringing back Draymond Green, thus running it back with last year’s disappointing team. Hopefully, the team won’t be so bad that Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody decide to rehab all season rather than chase a play-in seed.
It’s just hard to believe that this was the Warriors’ master plan the whole time and that there were no opportunities better than waiting on LeBron James for four weeks. He just wasn’t that into the Warriors, and the team never made moves to make themselves more appealing.
