Why LeBron James would NEVER leave Los Angeles Lakers | THE HERD NBA

Why LeBron James would NEVER leave Los Angeles Lakers | THE HERD NBA

All right. So, here’s a story that’s been simmering and sort of hovering like those like those UPAs, those UFOs over New Jersey were. Remember that for about a 3-week trial kind of hovering over what are they? That’s what I feel the LeBron trade rumors are like. Nobody’s quite sure what they are, what they mean. They’re out there. I think maybe it’s a plane. I don’t buy them. I do not buy the LeBron trade rumors. Here’s why. The best contract you can have in professional basketball is a superstar in his prime. SGA, Joic, Luca, those are the guys that win in May and June. Rookie contracts are nice. Best contract, superstar in his prime. SGA wins a title. Jokic wins a title. The second best contract to me is a highly productive player with a lot of seasoning who is still good, probably out of his prime and he has an expiring contract and that’s LeBron. This is it. They can play with it. Leverage to the Lakers. They can move him at the trade deadline. They could move him now. I wouldn’t. So why would you get rid of that? I mean, he was 248 and 8 last year. He was all NBA second team. He was sixth in MVP voting. That’s the highest in years. He’s highly productive and he’s capable of helping you in a playoff series. I’m not trading that away. And by the way, his agent, Rich Paul, has acknowledged publicly, yeah, LeBron knows it’s Luca’s team, so there’s no real angst with LeBron James. He knows it’s Luca’s team. They’re going to take care of him first. He’ll get a new deal. So, I don’t buy the trade talks. Also, you know, this is the time of the year it’s, hey, how do I fill my three-hour show? How do I fill my column? I don’t buy it. Now, I do believe they will transition out of this potentially if things go south, but why now and why today? Remember, the Lakers got better. There’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful. I do not believe they are going to be as good as Houston. Uh, I don’t think they’re Oklahoma City. I don’t think they’re as good as Dallas. But JJ Reicks in year two, he’ll be better. Bronny’s had a good summer league. He may contribute. Luca is going to be in great shape and they’re better at center. I don’t love DeAndre Aton. He’s allergic to defense. Always himself as a one. He’s more of a three to a four in a championship level team. It’ll probably be a three or a four for the Lakers. We’ll see. But that team is not a very good defensive team. And to win a championship, Oklahoma City just proved you can do it with defense. So the Lakers are going to be very interesting this upcoming season. and they’re going to be very good. They’re not going to win a title. They’re not going to hoist a trophy. They’re not going to be great. LeBron’s past his prime. Austin Reeves can be picked on defensively. DeAndre Aton’s moody, never happy, and doesn’t defend. And Luca, he’ll be in good shape, but but you know, you’re not getting much defense there either. But in Kobe’s last year, they were uninteresting and won 17 games. They were awful. So, this is not a bad place to be. Very good and very interesting. So, I don’t buy the trade rumors. Hosts have to fill space. I think at the trade deadline, as Chris Brousard said yesterday, things could be interesting if it goes south. I think he starts the season with the Lakers. Now, if for some reason it goes terrible, would they try to move him at the deadline? maybe get him to a team with a chance to do something in the playoffs. Yeah, something like that. But I don’t see it going terrible. They were playing good basketball and and that was on the fly, right? That was with a roster not built around Luca. It was on the fly. LeBron had to all of a sudden adjust to being the second guy offensively and they still played good basketball. So, you would expect them to be better. They will be better. They won’t be great, but they’ll be good and interesting. Why move off that now? Um, so, okay. Okay, here we go. Cooper flag. He, uh, what a summer league debut. The highs, the lows, the fight. I’m here for all of it. It lasted two games. Uh, I’ll get to that in a second. The summer league is a little, you know, it’s fun for fans and I think the NBA has done a great job with Vegas. I like the highlights. It’s fun. I like watching it. I don’t think you can take a lot out of it, but there’s two things I’ve taken out of it. Number one, Yang Hansen, who was called a reach when the Blazers drafted in middle of the first round. Yeah, that that that’s not a reach. That kid, man, that is Jokic handles uh IQ. Uh there not a lot of 7 foot one 20 year olds that elevate others. They’re just trying to figure out themselves. That kid is I mean feel, touch. It’s a little Jokic Shenon from Houston. Like, I’m sorry, that kid’s got something. I And again, NBA physicality is different. You’re playing against a lot of rotational guys in summer league or guys that don’t make the league. Whatever that guy is something else, and he showed on draft night, he has a sense of humor. What are some of your interests? And what do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t playing basketball? Sometimes uh I sleep all time sleep and uh I like play pig PS5 and and uh I like eat. Yeah, that that there are some things, you know, that are overvalued, but touch and feel and the elevation of other players around you, you could see that from LeBron James in high school. You could see that very early as Joic was trying to refine his game as a second round pick. This kid’s got some real some real finesse, touch, how how does he deal with the physicality of the NBA? That was shockingly impressive. that kid can. There is a field that you cannot teach and that kid has it and that’s exciting. The second thing is Cooper Flag did not need more than two games. So, I’ve been on this is one of my theories that because you get such young players in the NBA, like in the NFL, you get guys that are 23 years old, they’re men, they’re developed. Jared Vers is a man. He walks into the league. Jaylen Carter’s a man. Major League Baseball, you get drafted, you go to the minors, by the time you’re in the bigs, you’re a man. Uh, same with themies, the MLS. But in the NBA, you’re dealing with 17, 18, 19, 20 year old kids. So, I’ve always had this theory. I would put every rookie, every rookie on a minutes restriction and a game restriction. Everyone, because in college football, you go from 14 games to 17. They’re 23 years old. Let them play. But college basketball is 35 36 games. Much slower pace, much less physical. You’ve got a shot clock. Okay, the NBA is the bullet train. Even at Duke, how often does he go up against an NBA player? So NBA is faster, more physicality, 37 games of college to 82 games of bullet train basketball. I would limit rookies. Even like a Cooper flag, you’re going to play 65 games. You’re not doing backto backs. Um I’m going to I’m going to take I want the home fans to see a lot. I’ll reward the home fans. I’m gonna give you some night games off, some road games, excuse me, some road games off. Um, so I don’t I I would be minute restriction for all rookies because I think the jump from college basketball at 18 19 years old to the severity and intensity of the NBA is too big a leap to do 82 games physical pace of play. Wouldn’t do it. College football’s different. You’re older. Your body is more refined. You’re more of you’re more of a grown man. and you’re going from 14 games to 17 with a buy in between. I I’m good with that. So, um anyway, that’s my take. The kid in Portland, wow, that’s impressive. So, uh in a stunning development, WNBA players are acknowledging uh Caitlyn Clark’s really good. I saw this week that uh uh uh the coach of Yukon uh Gino Orama uh acknowledging Yeah, I missed on that. Uh he let his Yukon bias get in the way of it, but I saw a poll WNBA players were pled on who’s going to be the face of the league in 5 years. And in a runaway vote, it was Caitlyn Clark with about 55% of the vote. Uh Guju uh Watkins and Paige Beckers, really, really good young players, dynamic players, uh were second and third. And I do think this is fair to say for any employee base in any industry in any company. For the employees to go from ignored to widely discussed and criticized is really difficult. It was a tsunami of attention. The league, the commissioner wasn’t ready for it. The arenas, the ticket salesman, they weren’t ready for it. So, you went from in the shadows to in the spotlight and it was a microscope. It It’s almost like I remember when I was a young broadcaster, I moved to Vegas and Mike Tyson came out and uh a legendary old trainer said, “You can’t prepare for a Mike Tyson left hook. It doesn’t matter who your sparring partners are. It doesn’t matter how many fights you’ve had. At 24 years old, if Tyson delivers a left hook, you’re not ready for it.” And I don’t think uh I mean I I Taylor Swift had been in music several years before the era’s tour, but I think that even caught people a little off guard where it sold out Sofi Stadium seven straight nights. And I just don’t think the league was ready for uh uh for Caitlyn Clark. And so I said, listen, um I’m going to give the the league should be ready. You knew her sophomore year at Michigan, she’s dropping 40 plus or her sophomore year at Iowa, she’s dropping 40 plus. uh against Michigan. If you go read Christine Brennan’s book, there were a lot of signs she was going to be a superstar in the league and sell a lot of tickets and shoes and merchandise. Uh so I I’m going to be punitive on the league, but the players I get six to nine months to kind of get your arms around it. So I it’s like my kids when they went to college, freshman year, you’re going to have fun. Sophomore year, hit the books, grow up. And I kind of feel like the players now, this poll is encouraging. It’s, you know, it’s progress. Um, and I do think it was hard. I mean, there there’s nobody’s quite ready. Like, everybody knew. I remember when everybody was talking about Tiger Woods when he was winning the Juniors and I was in Oregon and people at Nike were saying, “This kid, man, this kid is really good.” I don’t think anybody thought he was going to literally change course design because he was so long off the tea and dominant. I mean, he was ahead of golf equipment. golf equipment over the last 5 to 10 years. Even hacks like me can hit the ball a little bit. I mean, he was a mile ahead of golf equipment. He was ahead of the sport and we all knew he was great. I don’t think anybody could have predicted uh LeBron James would rival Michael Jordan as the best player ever. Nobody really thought that. There were people that thought you should have drafted Carmelo Anthony over. And I think I think Caitlyn Clark, what do you do? How do you prepare? I think the league should have been more prepared, but I will mostly defend players in that first nine months of kind of like being juvenile and not getting it. Now, I think they have to grow up now and get their feet beneath them, but this is an encouraging sign that they’re acknowledging, yeah, she’s a face of the league and and also there are members of the media that are going to pick and choose isolated insul incidents and kind of stoke the fire of what’s happening in the league. But I think the fairest criticism of the WNBA is to the commissioner and the league really not getting it when she broke into the league and they had her playing like the most road games and the worst hardest schedule of any WNBA team in the first month. That’s just not having enough foresight. But this is encouraging J-Mack. Here’s the uh by the way her head coach Stephanie White on Caitlyn going up against Paige Beckers last weekend. I mean, everybody wants to see star players. Uh, you think about when who who who tunes in to watch LeBron and Steph, right? It’s it’s those kinds of matchups. And I think to watch these guys for the first time, you know, going against each other um in their WNBA careers is going to be special. In my day, it’s watching, you know, Cheryl Swoops and Lisa Lesley. Um, you know, and in their day, it’s it’s watching Caitlin and Paige. Do you realize, Jac, I was thinking about this when I was flying back by next Monday and Tuesday, camps will be open in the NFL. We’re getting really, really close. I was I was thinking I was I was watching some shows and watching some stuff and reading a lot, flying back, and I’m thinking, okay, the silly season’s almost over. The let’s make up big stories. LeBron’s getting traded. Nick Sabin’s coming back to college football. All the nonsense. I I’ll address that topic next hour. But um yeah, I mean I think we’re at a point now this time next week camps are open. We’re ready to roll, baby. Obviously, you’re going to meet me in Vegas in August, right? To lay down some futures bets for the upcoming season, right? Um I got six new playoff teams. I’m ready for it. Six? Yeah, I got

Colin Cowherd reacts to the latest in the NBA. He explains why LeBron James most likely will play for Los Angeles Lakers alongside Luka Doncic next season and why it wouldn’t make sense to leave. Next Colin gives his best takeaways from NBA summer league and talks about Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg’s potential. Finally Colin reacts to the WNBA finally recognizing Caitlin Clark is the face of the league.

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