Rich Paul: LeBron James won’t be traded ahead of Feb. 8 deadline

Rich Paul: LeBron James won’t be traded ahead of Feb. 8 deadline

We are less than a week away from the 2024 Feb. 8 NBA Trade Deadline. With that, there’s always buzz all around the league on who’s available, potential buyers/sellers and an abundance of pseudo-trade packages that may or may not break the internet.

Over the last 48-72 hours, noise has gotten louder in Hollywood–not just with Dejounte Murray potentially heading to Los Angeles (which has been floated around for the last several weeks), but superstar forward LeBron James potentially asking out. While there was no reputable reporting around James getting moved, agent Rich Paul shut down any potential trade buzz regarding James on Friday.

“LeBron won’t be traded, and we aren’t asking to be,” Paul told ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.

Paul is the league’s powerful agent, and James is obviously the league’s most powerful player. The Lakers are currently an even 25-25, slotted as the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference between the Dallas Mavericks and the Utah Jazz. They are currently four games behind the Phoenix Suns for the sixth-and-final non-play-in spot in the West.

James owns a $51.4 million player option in 2024-25, the last year of his deal, according to Spotrac. Is any team willing to take that on? The Lakers have several other tradeable contracts that it could part with to fortify its roster, such as Rui Hachimura‘s $51 million, D’Angelo Russell‘s $36 million, Gabe Vincent‘s $33 million and Taurean Prince‘s $4.5 million, among others. We’ve seen James “orchestrate” myriad roster changes in the past, and I expect the same will happen ahead of next week’s deadline.

Plus, outside of next year’s cap figure, it would be difficult for most contending teams to match LeBron James’ $47.6 million cap hit for this season. Any team parting with multiple valuable assets for 3-4 months of him with uncertainty about where his son Bronny gets drafted, should he declare for the 2024 draft, feels … incredibly risky? If said team won a title, it would be worth it, but there’s no guarantee of that.

All in all, it would be a roadblock-and-a-half for any team trading for James if a title wasn’t the end outcome. Throwing everything aside, where is your favorite hypothetical James trade destination, and to where? Let us know in the comments!

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