On July 1, 2018, LeBron James announced he was signing a four-year $153.3 million contract to play basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers.
At the time he announced this move, there were no other superstars coming with him, and no immediately clear path to him extending his personal streak of making eight consecutive Finals. No, he’d be “going at it alone,” joining a roster of mostly unproven young players — some high lottery picks, some deeper draft/undrafted steals — and a few holdover veterans in an attempt
to steward them into the next era of what many hoped, but even more doubted, could be the next Lakers champion.
Nearly eight years to the day, on June 30, 2026, LeBron James announced he would continue his career into a 24th campaign, but on a different team, leaving the Lakers after the longest uninterrupted stint of his Hall of Fame career. Unlike when he arrived, James was leaving a team that had a superstar already in tow, which, not coincidentally, helped to facilitate his decision to move on by essentially replacing him in both importance and status as the Lakers’ best player.
In the 2,291 days between LeBron’s announcement of his arrival and his decision to leave, he and the Lakers had their ups and downs, to be sure, but ultimately accomplished just about everything anyone could have realistically expected.
Individually, LeBron was named to eight All-Star games, one of the three All-NBA teams seven times, had three top-10 finishes in MVP voting (including a second place finish in 2020), passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer (and, more broadly, the league’s oldest player to accomplish essentially anything of meaning in an individual game or average across a season), and won the Finals MVP. And, as a team, the Lakers won the organization’s 17th championship by claiming the 2020 title and won the inaugural In-Season Tournament/NBA Cup in 2024.
Whenever his career is over, his jersey will hang in the rafters and that’s that.
I’ll add, too, that while the 2019-20 season was the one where LeBron and the team experienced their most success together, it also doubled as one of the hardest for the organization, its fans, and, generally, the world. With the death of franchise and sports icon Kobe Bryant in January and then the COVID-19 shutdown in mid-March, LeBron put the franchise on his broad shoulders, serving as a leader both on and off the court to help stabilize the organization in ways that go beyond just basketball. I don’t know if there was a single player in the league I would have wanted more leading the team than LeBron during that time and I’ll always be grateful he was with the team to carry the burden that he did.
In bringing it back to the court, though, maybe fans wanted more. Some always will, of course. More titles, more regular season success, more consistent deep playoff runs…just more. But, in the eight years LeBron spent in Los Angeles, not a single team repeated as champion. We never saw a repeat Finals matchup or, even less so, a single team make the Finals in back-to-back seasons — though the Warriors, Celtics, and Heat each made two Finals in that stretch.
Maybe the Lakers could have been one of those teams that made more than one Finals run or bucked the trend and won a second, or even went back-to-back. They were certainly on track in 2021. But a Solomon Hill dive for a loose ball into LeBron’s legs and then an Anthony Davis sprained knee ended that idea. Then, later that summer, the ill-fated trade for Russell Westbrook essentially spiraled the team backward, undermining their championship chances long enough for the internal belief in the LeBron and Davis duo to erode to a point where the front office would no longer sacrifice assets that could possibly get them over the hump.
Whoever you want to blame for this, you’re likely to be correct.
The stars — LeBron included — either couldn’t stay healthy or couldn’t lift a flawed group of role players high enough to get past Denver to really make a sustained push to another title. And even though LeBron reportedly bought in and signed off, it was front office who both executed the disastrous Russ trade and then ultimately decided they would neither sacrifice more future assets to either get out of his deal earlier nor try to grab the sort of reinforcements LeBron and AD needed after it was clear the remade group they did build wasn’t good enough to get over the top.
And to the degree Jeanie Buss could have stepped in from her ownership role to alter the course charted in any way, it never happened, allowing Rob Pelinka to divest from a LeBron-led team to one that actively sought out its next superstar instead — something, to his credit, he did better than anyone could have ever imagined when he was able to flip Davis for Luka Dončić.
Which brings us to present day.
I, for one, have no hard feelings towards LeBron, or even his “camp” of Rich Paul and the more Bron-centric media talking heads who have been taking subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) shots at the Lakers in the wake of LeBron leaving for Philly. As I said up top, LeBron did everything I could have ever expected him to, and did it with a level of commitment to both his teammates and the franchise that you’d want from your best player. And while hearing the jabs from those around him is both annoying and somewhat predictable, it doesn’t sour my view of James himself or his time here.
From my POV, things weren’t always perfect, but they never are — not with Kareem, Magic, Shaq, or Kobe before him. But, just like those superstars who came before him, on most days, I knew exactly what I was getting from LeBron, and he delivered it with a spirit, joy, and love of the game that I always appreciated.
I know there are some who feel differently. Some, actively and derisively so. And I’m not here to tell you how to be a fan or who to like/cheer for. That’s how it goes with sports fandom — and especially how it goes with a fanbase as big as the Lakers’. There’s going to be a much wider range of opinions and like any other huge group of people, we’re not a monolith and there’s no one single opinion about any single player that every person will hold as their undeniable truth.
That said, I think we can all agree that with LeBron now gone, the pivot is here to Luka Dončić as the undisputed face of the franchise and the singular superstar this team will rise and fall with. And I, personally, am excited about what this means for the team and the franchise moving forward. LeBron leaving can mean different things to different people, but it’s undoubtedly an opportunity for Dončić to put his stamp on the Lakers in the singular way that his personality and game dictate.
This is something that never could have happened with LeBron here. He knew it, Luka knew it, Pelinka and the front office knew it, and so does everyone else. Which means it was probably time for this change to happen and goodbyes were in order.
So, goodbye LeBron. Much success to you in Philly. Except when you play the Lakers.
You can follow Darius on BlueSky at @forumbluegold and find more of his Lakers coverage on the Laker Film Room Podcast.
