NBA: What does the offseason hold for the Lakers and LeBron James?

It didn’t take long for the Lakers offseason to take center stage with LeBron James’ comments about retirement sparking plenty of questions.

• By
  
  Jacob Rude
  
• on May 24, 2023 1:41 pm

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There is no such thing as a quiet offseason for the Lakers but even by those standards, the swiftness with which the upcoming one became abnormal was jarring. Hours after the Lakers were swept out of the Western Conference Finals, LeBron James pondered retirement aloud for the first time and, suddenly, a whole host of questions arose.

Would he really retire? Is this really it? If he isn’t retiring, what else could this mean? Is it a leverage play? For who or what?

Largely speaking, time will only tell when it comes to those questions, but we can have guesses, educated ones or not. This week’s SB Nations Reacts survey looks at two of the biggest questions coming from LeBron’s postgame presser.

Many assume LeBron’s comments were a way to leverage the Lakers front office into making deals to remain competitive and/or pursue Kyrie Irving. LeBron has long wanted Kyrie on the Lakers and voiced his displeasure at that not happening earlier this season.

But Kyrie comes with an amount of baggage that is hard to fully list. When it comes to the basketball aspect, it’s hard not to look at the state of each franchise he has left, each one worse off than when he arrived. His arrival would also come at the cost of the depth the Lakers found mid-season and that helped power them to their deep postseason run.

All that, though, works under the assumption that LeBron isn’t actually retiring, which we don’t know for a fact. It all sets up for a very fascinating summer and offseason for the Lakers, even if we’re only days into it.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.

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