When LeBron James joined the Miami Heat in 2010, he brought Chris Bosh with him to a team that already had Dwyane Wade. In 2014, his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers was swiftly followed by a blockbuster trade for Kevin Love. He was willing to be a bit more patient with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018. It took them a whole year to acquire Anthony Davis, with whom he happened to share an agent.
For most of his career, teams have been willing and even eager to move heaven and Earth in order to employ James. In all three cases, it was worth it. Each of those teams won championships. James in his prime was so singularly valuable that you could argue that a team should be willing to do anything in order to convince him to play for them.
James, now 41 and entering his 24th NBA season, isn't that good anymore. Instead of being a championship-guaranteeing force, he is merely an All-Star-caliber player in his 40s who can lift any roster, but not fully carry one. Under most circumstances, acquiring such a player is desirable, but only under responsible circumstances. You'd love to have him, but heaven and Earth can sit tight. At best, you're moving a continent.
But James' 2026 free agency does not represent normal circumstances. By all accounts, he is not making a decision based on money. In theory, that makes him gettable for the minimum. Even now, at this stage of his career, James at the minimum would be perhaps the greatest, immediately apparent value contract in the history of free agency.
The Sporting News' Stephen Noh has a salary projection model based on DARKO DPM, the all-in-one metric. Last season, it valued James at $28.2 million, and that doesn't factor in his ability to scale up in high-leverage playoff games. His minimum salary as a 10-year veteran would be $3.9 million, but it would count against the cap only for $2.5 million, the minimum salary for a two-year veteran. NBA finances have never been tighter. A $25 million surplus on a single player in the apron era is a genuinely season-altering boon. If your goal is to win the 2027 championship, getting such a surplus is suddenly worth moving heaven and Earth again.
The Philadelphia 76ers struck first. They acquired Jaylen Brown on Wednesday, and while that move was not made specifically with James in mind, it may just get them a seat at the table. The 76ers are reportedly pursuing James now, and getting Brown probably won't hurt their chances.
Most of the major business of the offseason is done. Brown, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kawhi Leonard, the three biggest names believed to be available, have all moved. But the chance to lure one star player can lead to surprising moves to get another. Nobody thought Paul George was moving in 2019. Leonard's availability compelled the Los Angeles Clippers to go all-in for him.
So with James sitting on the market, are there moves some of the interested parties can pursue to potentially entice James? Before you ask, we're not considering Bronny James here. I'm assuming the Lakers either view him as a legitimate prospect and won't move him. Or they don't. In that case, acquiring him is just table stakes and is probably doable at a trivial price. We'll start with superstars and work our way down.
Can anyone get Anthony Davis?
I know what the reporting is saying. The Washington Wizards are batting away all trade suitors. They want to keep Anthony Davis! They're even hinting at extending him. I don't doubt that this is indeed what they are telling the world. I absolutely doubt that they mean it.
One of two things is true here, and I'll let you decide what's more plausible. Either a Wizards team that just made the No. 1 overall pick and is loaded with young players that will need to be extended at market rate salaries in the next few years is eager to pay Davis supermax money for two more years immediately after giving Trae Young a completely confounding max contract, or Washington is posturing for the sake of negotiating position.
This front office doesn't have enough of a track record with such high-stakes games of poker for me to say definitively which option is correct. I'll just point out that Wizards president Michael Winger came up in the NBA working for the Oklahoma City Thunder and worked for the Clippers when Sam Presti extorted them for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and half a decade's worth of first-round picks to get George. He knows what it means to have a trade partner over a barrel.
Now he can be on the other side of that, spinning a player he got essentially for nothing into the sort of haul that the possibility of securing LeBron James might entice another team to give him. Assuming real offers exist for Davis, passing up that opportunity to extend or even just keep an injury-prone 33-year-old on such a young roster would be among the more irresponsible decisions a front office has made in recent history. For the moment, I am assuming that teams would be willing to make real offers if acquiring Davis came with a guarantee from James.
So for now, we're going to operate on the idea that Davis is in play. Who can't get him? The Heat have neither the matching salary nor the draft picks. Ditto the Denver Nuggets, who couldn't handle the second-apron hard cap such a trade would generate without unfathomable depth sacrifices. The Minnesota Timberwolves spent all of their matching salary and draft capital on LaMelo Ball.
Of the primary suitors, there are three straightforward Davis fits:
Golden State Warriors
The Golden State Warriors have a like-sized contract in Jimmy Butler and most of their own draft picks to deal. This is the easiest concept on the board. It would just be a matter of negotiating draft compensation. As a reminder, the Wizards paid two essentially fake first-round picks (one that was top-20 protected, another from Oklahoma City that was No. 30) to get Davis. If the Warriors gave them even one genuinely unprotected pick deep into the future, the Wizards would be making out like bandits here.
Cleveland Cavaliers
Why isn't Cleveland viewed as a plausible Davis team? The Cavaliers could match money with Jarrett Allen, Max Strus and Dennis Schröder (before you ask, Evan Mobley is absolutely not available for this). Allen, given his age and the fact that he makes half as much money, is frankly a better asset than Davis is today. If the Wizards could squeeze the Cavaliers for their 2031 first-round pick, then this becomes a heist. If James is willing to take the minimum, they'd have plenty of room underneath their second-apron hard cap to re-sign James Harden at an appropriate salary and fill out the roster with minimums. It would hardly be a perfect team. There would be zero on-ball defense, for example, as Dean Wade and Keon Ellis left without getting replaced. Cleveland would have basically no means of finding anything with most of its picks and tradable salary spent. But think of the talent of a starting five featuring James, Mobley, Davis, Harden and Donovan Mitchell. Figure the rest out later.
Philadelphia 76ers
Here's the wild suggestion: Joel Embiid and draft capital for Anthony Davis. The 76ers can still trade their unprotected 2033 first-round pick, plus a handful of swaps. Embiid has the NBA's worst contract... but a Davis extension might age worse. As it stands, Embiid's present deal is only one year longer. Embiid is certainly more injury-prone, but Davis is about as close as any other star in the NBA. Embiid at least played at an All-NBA level when he was available last season. Davis did not. I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand as the Wizards. There are absolutely worlds in which Embiid is simply better than Davis over the next handful of seasons. He just isn't a former teammate of LeBron's.
Can anyone get Kyrie Irving?
Kyrie Irving should probably be available. He's a 34-year-old coming off a torn ACL on a Dallas Mavericks team built around a teenager in Cooper Flagg. There's a pretty straightforward internal logic here. The Mavericks don't control their own first-round pick again until 2031. Replenishing while Irving still has some value makes plenty of sense. They're operating on Flagg's timeline now.
None of the core suitors can accommodate Irving. Miami spent too much of its draft capital on Antetokounmpo. Philadelphia, Minnesota and Cleveland already have multiple big-name guards. Golden State only has one in Stephen Curry, but Irving just isn't a fit next to him defensively. I suppose you could squint and see a possible Jamal Murray-for-Irving trade, but Murray, being younger, healthier, presently better and the second-best player in Nuggets history, just has substantially higher trade value. Would Dallas give up a lot to close that gap? Would Nikola Jokić allow it? I'm guessing the answer to those questions is "no."
However, if James is open-minded enough, I wonder if there are sleeper teams that could suit both him and Irving. Actually, I don't wonder. I have two of them locked and loaded:
Houston Rockets
The Houston Rockets have suitable matching salary in Fred VanVleet, an older starting-caliber point guard. We'll toss in Clint Capela now that Steven Adams is healthy again, so the Rockets can have a bit more hard cap wiggle room. And we'll have to loop this in with the Dorian Finney-Smith trade the Rockets made with Charlotte on Friday, so they can send out more money than they take back. They also control Dallas' 2029 first-round pick, along with a host of other valuable draft assets. They badly needed guard play last season, and while they hope VanVleet's return addresses that need, Irving could as well. Oh yeah, and they employ Kevin Durant. At least as far as championship contention goes... why are the Rockets not viewed as a superior "Expendables" style last run for a group of aging legends over the Warriors? The Rockets would be younger, deeper and more versatile.
Detroit Pistons
The Detroit Pistons have been linked to Irving, and they badly need a secondary shot creator. They also have a power forward hole to fill. They added John Collins in free agency, but he's come off the bench some over the past two years. Pairing the James-Irving duo with Cade Cunningham would address some of Detroit's offensive issues, and Ausar Thompson would still be around to lead the defense. They'd still have to figure out the Jalen Duren situation, but restricted free agency is their friend in that regard. The Pistons have cap flexibility and all of their own picks to trade. This is solvable.
Will any non-blockbuster moves matter to James?
This section is a Trojan horse I'm using to write about the Nuggets and their enormous potential luxury tax bill. Denver is right around the second apron at this moment. It can save a bit of room beneath it by waiving the $10 million non-guaranteed Jonas Valančiūnas contract, but re-signing restricted free agent Peyton Watson would take Denver far above the line before even filling out the rest of the roster with minimum salaries. Considering their status as a repeat payer, their luxury tax bill almost certainly crosses nine figures at that point.
This is why the Nuggets have been rumored in so many possible cap dumps, most notably involving Cameron Johnson and Christian Braun. Whether they trade one of them for savings or let Watson leave in free agency, the widespread expectation is that the Nuggets will make at least one significant decision this offseason that will make the roster worse in the name of trimming the tax bill.
I consider this possibility unconscionable. The Nuggets have Jokić, a three-time MVP at the absolute peak of his powers. He's the best player this franchise has had in its 59 years of existence and it might be another 59 years before they get someone else this good. Franchise valuations seemingly rise without limit. Jokić's salary has been capped at the max for his entire career when the reality is he generates tens of millions of dollars in surplus value every year. Lowering his championship odds in the name of tax savings would be a slap in his face. I'm not saying he agrees with that, but it's notable that there is reporting he may not sign an extension this offseason when he is only a year away from possible free agency. If a star wanted to leverage his team into paying his teammates, this is how he would do it.
All of this ties back to James because he is notorious for holding his teams accountable for their spending. When James played for the Heat, they used the amnesty provision to waive Mike Miller after a championship season just to save money. He left a year later. The Cavaliers and Lakers got plenty wrong in the years that followed, but they generally spent on talent (aside from the Lakers' decision to let Alex Caruso walk in 2021). He is not going to sign with a team that cheaps out on talent in any way, shape or form. He is friends with Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke, and maybe the auxiliary revenue from employing him could convince Denver to bite the bullet on one giant tax payment. James would presumably need to know this before committing.
The stakes aren't quite as high in Philadelphia, but the same basic logic applies. The 76ers sneak under the tax line every trade deadline. Embiid publicly asked them not to do that this year and they still did, making the widely-mocked Jared McCain deal. At around $5 million or so above the line today, they are close enough to do so again this year if they choose. That will not be happening if James is playing for them.
The Warriors and Cavaliers spend like drunken sailors. They're not concerns in this regard. The Heat are hard-capped at the first apron, so they won't mind a small tax bill. Minnesota would probably have to promise not to dump the injured Donte DiVincenzo, but the reporting suggests that they weren't planning to do that anyway, so everything there would be copasetic.
What about smaller, appeasement moves? Here's the tricky thing: most of the players James has won championships with are retired. That's not an exaggeration. He is the only remaining active player from the 2011-12 and 2012-13 Miami Heat. The only active players from the 2016 Cavaliers are Irving and Love. Of the two, Love is far more available. He played a real role in Utah, and while he's probably beyond helping a contender on the court, he's a great locker room figure whom James might enjoy reuniting with. That's a fine use of a minimum salary slot.
There are a handful of active 2020 Lakers, but none are likely to factor in here. The Thunder are not trading Caruso. Kyle Kuzma is overpaid in Milwaukee. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is at the end of his rope. Davis, we've covered. And that's the list, though notably, Jared Dudley is an assistant coach in Denver.
Speaking of assistant coaches, there was a pretty notable one on that 2020 Lakers team: Jason Kidd. James reveres Kidd. They won gold together for Team USA in 2008. He openly campaigned for the Cavaliers to trade for Kidd during his playing days. When the two were together in Los Angeles, ESPN reported that multiple sources independently claimed that James regards Kidd as "the only person alive who sees the game of basketball with his level of clarity."
Kidd parlayed his assistant gig with the Lakers into the head job with the Mavericks. He got fired from that job this offseason and is currently unemployed. There is no coaching salary cap, nor is there a maximum number of assistants a team can employ (though only three occupy the more prestigious "front of bench" positions). Any team is free to try to hire him as a lure for James, though his willingness to take on an assistant role is unclear.
There are surely behind-the-scenes concessions teams could make as well, lower-level staffers who make life easier for James in ways that don't reach the public eye. The chance to have him at such a reduced salary will compel teams to bend over backward. If there is anything a team can realistically do to acquire LeBron short of absolutely gutting its future, it should probably at least attempt to do so.
