The farewell tour LeBron James will go on after announcing his retirement will be as marketable as it will be memorable. As is the nature of life in 2026, everyone will be trying to get a piece of the pie.
It’s with that in mind that Monday’s news feels a bit like a soft launch for the upcoming farewell tour.
For the remainder of the season, LeBron will don a special, commemorative patch on his jersey
, signifying his 23 years in the league.James’ jersey will have a patch affixed to the upper right
chest to celebrate his record-setting 23rd NBA season, featuring a silhouette of his pregame chalk toss and three colored stripes representing the franchises he has played for in Cleveland, Miami and L.A.
James will wear the patch throughout the remaining 46 games of the regular season.
Before jumping to the obvious conclusion of this only being something done for a player about to retire — a feeling most of us likely had — this is in collaboration with Topps, the trading card company. After each game, the patch will be removed from the jersey, placed into a card and sold.
While this is new for LeBron, it’s not new for Topps as other players, both in the NBA and other leagues, have had similar patches on their jerseys for the purpose of being placed into cards.
After every game James plays, the patch will be removed from his jersey by the Lakers’ equipment manager, dated and then shipped to Topps’ production facility in Dallas where it will be authenticated and later inserted into a trading card.
Topps, which launched its first NBA-licensed cards in 16 years in October, introduced a similar jersey patch program with rookies wearing a “Debut Patch” on their uniform for their first game and last season’s MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), Defensive Player of the Year (Evan Mobley) and Rookie of the Year (Stephon Castle) wearing a special gold NBA logo on the back of their uniform to later be featured on a trading card.
For now, then, it doesn’t seem like this is a precursor to an imminent retirement announcement from LeBron. This is still a record-breaking season for him, which might have gone under the radar a bit. And capitalism rules the way, so everyone is trying to get that piece of the pie.
But if this feels like a bit of a soft-launch of a farewell tour, you’re not alone in that feeling.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
