Admit it, Lakers fans: When LeBron James chose to join your favorite team, on that July evening in 2018 after hearing Magic Johnson’s sales pitch, didn’t you have visions of championships – plural – soon to follow?
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So as LeBron now prepares to take his talents elsewhere, with the news breaking Tuesday morning that he will not return to the Lakers in 2026-27 but will play a 24th NBA season with somebody else, one conclusion is inescapable.
In terms of the standards of this franchise, LeBron underachieved. Yes, that sounds harsh and might be way over the top, but stay with me here.
The Lakers are an organization that values (a) superstars and (b) championships. There are 17 NBA title banners on the arena wall – no, we don’t count that in-season tournament banner – and copies of those treasured pieces of cloth in the rafters of their practice facility. The franchise’s historic courting of superstars has been largely driven by their value in helping hang those banners and – let’s face it – trying to keep up with the Boston Celtics.
So this is what LeBron left behind after eight seasons here, the longest uninterrupted residency among his 23 NBA campaigns: One NBA title, in the 2020 COVID bubble, and one additional loss in a Western Conference finals, in 2023.
(And no, I’m not discounting that bubble championship, as some choose to. It had its own unique stresses, ones I’m not sure any of us would have handled it any better.)
As for the rest of the ledger? Even with the time, energy and money that LeBron spends maintaining his body, a dedication that a lot of athletes don’t share, the demands of an NBA schedule – and bad injury luck, and quite likely Father Time as well – kept catching up with him here.
Two of LeBron’s Lakers teams missed the playoffs altogether, in his first season of 2018-19 (when he suffered a groin injury on Christmas night and missed 27 games) and 2021-22 (when he was bugged by an abdominal strain and injuries to his left knee and ankle). The 2020-21 team had to fight its way into the playoffs through the play-in game but went out in the first round, a season in which he missed 20 games with a high ankle sprain that, he later related, hampered him for years afterward.
The Lakers were swept by eventual champion Denver in the conference finals in ’23 – but got there by beating a depleted Memphis squad and Golden State in the first two rounds, after a 2-10 start to the season that gave them a 0.3% chance of making the playoffs. Their stretch run, up until the conference finals, rekindled memories of some of those championship springs of years past.
But they went out in five to the Nuggets in the first round in ’24, went out in five to Minnesota in the first round in ’25, and were swept in the second round by Oklahoma City this season after beating Houston in the first round. (And yes, LeBron woke up some echoes in the six-game victory over the Rockets, asserting himself with both Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves injured.)
But the playoff ledger remains one solitary title in one solitary Finals appearance, and it pales in comparison to other stars who have worn the Lakers uniform.
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• Wilt Chamberlain came to the Lakers in a July, 1968 trade with Philadelphia, following three straight MVP seasons with the 76ers. Wilt was acquired to help Jerry West and Elgin Baylor get past Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics. That never happened – Russell’s last act before retiring as a player was beating the Lakers for the 1969 title – but the Lakers reached the Finals in four of Wilt’s five seasons in L.A., and Chamberlain and West helped win the franchise’s first L.A. championship in 1972.
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar arrived in the summer of ’75 in a trade with Milwaukee. It took Johnson’s addition in the 1979 draft to turn this into Showtime, but ultimately Kareem and Magic led Lakers teams to eight Finals and five championships from 1980-89. And Kareem was the Finals MVP in 1985, when the Lakers finally won one in Boston Garden.
Yeah, those teams spoiled us. They created the titles-or-bust mentality that not only animates the fan base but influences the decisions of those in charge.
• Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant needed three seasons to figure things out after arriving here in the summer of 1996, O’Neal as a free agent and Bryant as a rookie. Mainly, they needed Phil Jackson to arrive as coach and tamp down the “whose team is it?” foolishness. The two teamed for a three-peat from 2000-02 and reached the Finals four times in five years, and Kobe with Pau Gasol added two more titles and three trips to the Finals at the end of that decade.
• And I guess we have to mention Dwight Howard, acquired from Orlando in a four-team trade in August of 2012. He was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Lakers’ next dynasty, and I remember him posing with the Lakers’ championship trophies, the expectation being that he and fellow newcomer Steve Nash would add to them. But by the time Howard got his own Lakers championship ring he had bounced around among six other NBA teams, been re-signed by L.A. in August of 2019, and was part of that bubble championship as a 34-year-old role player.
Understand, winning a championship is not one superstar player’s sole responsibility. Coaching matters; the Lakers had four head coaches in James’ eight seasons. Personnel around the star matters, too, and it’s Rob Pelinka’s responsibility to create a roster around the superstar – now Doncic – that can get the Lakers back into a position to play for a championship.
LeBron has won four championships all told: Two in Miami, in 2012 and ’13, after joining the Heat to team with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to form a Big Three, and a third after he went back to Cleveland and was part of a comeback from a 3-1 deficit against a Golden State team that was a record-setting 73-9 during the regular season in 2016. (Remember the chasedown block on Andre Igoudala late in Game 7?)
Now, if the grapevine is to be trusted, the Warriors are angling to team LeBron with old friends Steph Curry and Draymond Green as well as Anthony Davis, like LeBron a Rich Paul client, a member of that 2020 championship team – and a guy whose biggest contribution to the Lakers after that was as the centerpiece of the package going to Dallas for Doncic in February of 2025.
LeBron will get an ovation when he returns to play the Lakers, as he should. He left behind plenty of memories, and those in the stands on Feb. 7, 2023, who had their phones out to record the moment when he broke Kareem’s all-time scoring record hopefully have preserved those pieces of history.
As for the future, here’s the bottom line: The Celtics have 18 championships. The Lakers have 17, and to not only their fan base but their organization, that should be intolerable.