LeBron James recently completed his 21st season in the National Basketball Association, which is tied for the second-most NBA seasons of all-time. He could tie Vince Carter’s all-time mark of 22 seasons next year, but it’s not a given that it will come with the Los Angeles Lakers.
James, who just wrapped up his sixth season with the Lakers, has a player option for the 2024-25 season worth $51.4 million. He has several choices in front of him, with one being to pick up that option, play next season under that salary, and then enter the 2025-26 season as a free agent. Another is that he can pick up the option and then negotiate an extension with the Lakers that would take the 39-year-old well into his 40s with the Purple and Gold.
However, another choice in front of the four-time MVP is to opt out of his contract, decline that $51.4 million salary and become a free agent come July 1. While James has roughly another month to decide what he wants to do, it appears his agent may have let slip James’ intentions during a recent NBA broadcast.
Agent Rich Paul was interviewed during an alternate broadcast of Game 2 of the Dallas Mavericks versus Minnesota Timberwolves playoff series. He was asked about James’ potential influence in the Lakers’ head coaching search and whether or not James would have any input.
It may have been a slip of the tongue by Paul, who was then asked in a follow-up comment to confirm that James would opt out of his contract to become a free agent.
“You know, I don’t do my business over the air. I don’t know what he’s gonna do,” Paul then said. “We’re gonna do what we do every year. We’re gonna evaluate the situation, and we’re gonna make the best decision.”
It could have been a simple mistake by Paul, but James’ track history suggests that declining the option year and becoming a free agent is exactly what he’ll do. His four-year stint with the Miami Heat came to an end in 2014 when he opted out of his contract to become an unrestricted free agent. He would then rejoin the Cleveland Cavaliers, with whom he signed a two-year deal, which included a similar player option for the second year of that deal.
After one year in Cleveland, James opted out of that second year, became a free agent again, and signed another two-year deal with the Cavs with a similar option year in the second season. He’d play one season—winning a title with the Cavs in 2015-16—before, again, opting out of the second year and becoming a free agent once more in the summer of 2016.
He then signed a three-year deal with Cleveland—with the last year being an option year—and he’d play only the first two years of the deal in Cleveland before doing what he’d done so many times before and opting out of that third year. This time, however, he didn’t re-sign with the Cavs but joined the Lakers in the summer of 2018 and negotiated extensions which brought him to his current deal.
There have been business reasons behind all of his option declines over the past, as they allowed his contracts to be commensurate with the markets at those times. A series of essentially one-and-two-year contracts allow him to hit a refreshed market as opposed to signing a three-or-four-year deal in which his contract may be obsolete towards the latter years of those deals.
If James does become a free agent, that doesn’t mean he will leave the Lakers, just as he didn’t leave the Cavs after twice opting out. In terms of next season, it also allows him to see what personnel moves the Lakers will make, not to mention who they will hire as head coach. The team made the Western Conference Finals in 2022-23 but was eliminated in the first round of the 2023-24 playoffs. Outside of last season—and the 2020 NBA championship that the team won in the bubble—the Lakers have just three other playoff game victories and no postseason series won across James’ six years in Los Angeles.
James will turn 40 in December but is still putting up elite numbers. On a per-36-minute basis, his points, rebounds, assists, and field goal percentage were all higher this season than his career averages. He averaged 25.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 8.3 assists per game while knocking down 41 percent of his 3-point attempts, which was the best mark of his career. Already the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, James became the first player to reach 40,000 career points earlier this year.
