What if LeBron James went home to the Cavaliers? Why a Cleveland trade could actually make sense for everyone

LeBron James declared one aim above all others when he returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014. “My goal is still to win as many titles as possible, no question,” he explained in his now famous Sports Illustrated letter proclaiming his homecoming. “But what’s most important for me is bringing one trophy back to Northeast Ohio.” When he accomplished that goal in 2016, there was almost a sentiment that his obligation to his hometown had been fulfilled, that he was free to leave Cleveland and pursue whatever other goals he still had in mind. So when he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, the widespread belief was that the Cleveland chapter of his career was finally closed.

But by now, we should know to take James at his word. After all, when he listed Cavaliers teammates he was excited to play with in that letter, he notably excluded Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett. Sure enough, they were dealt to Minnesota for Kevin Love. LeBron is many things, but subtle has never been one of them, and there’s another piece of that letter that’s probably worth revisiting now, as he reportedly has questions about the direction of his current team, the Lakers.

“I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there. I just didn’t know when,” James told Sports Illustrated. “After the season, free agency wasn’t even a thought. But I have two boys and my wife, Savannah, is pregnant with a girl. I started thinking about what it would be like to raise my family in my hometown. I looked at other teams, but I wasn’t going to leave Miami for anywhere except Cleveland. The more time passed, the more it felt right. This is what makes me happy.”

The “when” in that moment was, obviously, 2014. James likely had every intention of finishing his career in Cleveland from there. But think about how the circumstances align for him now, both personally and professionally. His two boys are now grown. Bronny plays with his father on the Lakers. Bryce is headed to the University of Arizona to play college basketball next season. His daughter Zhuri is still school-aged, but James is nearing the end of his legendary career and likely wouldn’t need to uproot his family long-term for the sake of a new team. He always believed that he would finish his career in Cleveland. Now, he’s very likely at the end of it. And even if he did once plan to close the Cleveland chapter and finish his career with the Lakers, it is starting to become clear that his priorities no longer align with the team’s.

The Lakers acquired 26-year-old superstar Luka Dončić at the trade deadline. If they manage their assets prudently, there’s no reason that they can’t contend with him for the next five or even 10 years. But James isn’t operating on a five-to-10-year window. This might be his final NBA season. At best, he’s operating on a year-to-year basis. And he’s made it clear, through agent Rich Paul, that he would prefer the Lakers to do the same.

“LeBron wants to compete for a championship,” Paul told ESPN. “He knows the Lakers are building for the future. He understands that, but he values a realistic chance of winning it all.”

James “will be closely monitoring the Lakers’ moves and whether the team is positioning itself this offseason to field a title-contending roster,” according to ESPN. Right now, the Lakers are entering the free-agency period without a center on the roster and with key wing Dorian Finney-Smith opting out of his contract in search of a long-term deal.

If the Lakers don’t get the next few days right, their immediate championship window likely closes. The Thunder have set too high a bar to assume that, say, a mid-level signing of an older center and a few minimum free-agent swings are going to cut it. That probably doesn’t bother the front office too much. With Dončić, they can afford to be patient and perhaps spend this season building towards the future. But if that is their goal, it no longer makes sense to keep James on their team. His value might literally expire after this season. He could just retire! 

So if the Lakers want to maximize their long-term title odds and James wants to maximize his short-term chances, the sensible thing for both sides would be to part amicably. The Lakers could still generate significant long-term value in a trade. James, thanks to his no-trade clause, could dictate his destination and put himself in the best possible position to win in the short term. Sure, other teams will inevitably get mentioned if James starts to get antsy. The Knicks and Warriors are both fully in win-now mode, for instance, and he’s had dalliances with both in previous transaction cycles.

But the destination that makes the most sense, by far, is Cleveland. That isn’t just because of the sentiment or James’ previously expressed desire to retire there. It’s because of where they are as a basketball team. The Cavaliers are pot-committed to winning a championship in 2026 or 2027. Of course they are. The Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers are seemingly out of the Eastern Conference running while their best players recover from torn Achilles tendons. James has waltzed through some easy Eastern Conferences before, but nothing quite like this.

The Cavaliers are the favorites to win the East even now, without James in place. They just won 64 games and, had Darius Garland stayed healthy, may have reached the Finals last season. By re-signing Sam Merrill and turning Isaac Okoro into Lonzo Ball, Cleveland has set itself up for a payroll of roughly $400 million including luxury taxes once the roster is filled out. They aren’t just over the second apron, they’ve zoomed past it entirely. The rules are essentially set up for teams to do that twice in a five-year span before the harshest penalty (a draft pick automatically dropping to No. 30) kicks in after the third offense. If you’re operating on a two-year, all-in window, you probably want LeBron James on your team.

So the immediate question here is… is this possible? Could Cleveland construct a trade that both satisfies the Lakers and operates within the parameters of the collective bargaining agreement? The answer here is probably, but it would be tricky. Cleveland’s willingness to spend, one of its greatest assets overall, is also going to be a significant hindrance here because of the harsh restrictions that this CBA imposes on expensive teams.

The Cavaliers have been able to stack up so much salary because they haven’t yet run afoul of any CBA rules. Their much-celebrated swap of Okoro for Ball actually saved them money, so it didn’t trigger a hard cap. Re-signing Sam Merrill didn’t either, as they just retained their own player. However, in order to acquire James, they would have to aggregate multiple salaries just to match money for his $52.6 million contract. In doing so, they would trigger a hard cap at the second apron… which they are currently almost $19 million above with only 12 players under contract. Essentially, this means that the Cavaliers would have to find a way to save more than $20 million in a James trade just to make it legal and to fill out the roster.

Is the feasible? Well, that depends on how much of their current team they are willing to give up. The obvious piece that the Lakers would want would be former All-Star center Jarrett Allen. However, he has a relatively low $20 million cap figure for this season. Even if you combined him with De’Andre Hunter and Max Strus, the Cavaliers would still save only around $7 million, not nearly enough. 

This means that even if the Lakers wanted Allen, Darius Garland would have to be involved in some capacity. The combination of Garland, Allen and Hunter going out and James (and, to be realistic, Bronny James as well) coming in would save Cleveland around $28 million, enough to make the trade and possibly use the $5.7 million taxpayer mid-level exception. Put Strus in Allen’s place and the deal is still doable, but things get tighter for Cleveland on the margins. 

Cleveland’s preference would surely be to keep at least one of Allen or Garland. We’ll therefore assume that such a deal would include Garland, Hunter and Strus as outgoing Cleveland salary, but if the Cavaliers needed to grease the wheels with some draft capital, they could. They, like the Lakers, can trade swap rights on their first-round picks in 2030 and 2032 along with their pick outright in 2031. The Lakers would presumably prefer to get a center back in this trade, but Hunter and Strus are good players on reasonable salaries. Swapping one for a big man would likely be doable if necessary.

At this point we should also acknowledge that the Lakers can’t just absorb an extra $20 million or so in salary for Cleveland’s sake. They’re pressed up against the aprons as well. We’d need a third team here. Brooklyn stands out as an obvious partner with its seemingly endless well of cap space. However, the longer this drags out, the more likely it is that someone else pays Brooklyn to take on their own bad contracts. As a reminder, in this new CBA, teams must spend up to the salary floor (90% of the cap) by the first day of the regular season, so there is a ticking clock in Brooklyn’s space. They won’t want to sit on it forever.

Here’s a tougher question: aside from Allen, would the Cavaliers even have things that the Lakers want? By all indications, the Lakers are trying to preserve 2026 cap space. That’s probably part of why James opted in. Had he opted out and taken a pay cut as he offered to do last year, he likely would have wanted another player option for the 2026-27 season. While we don’t know for certain that the Lakers didn’t offer such an arrangement, that appears plausible given the circumstances. Key wing Dorian Finney-Smith declined his player option and hit free agency seemingly in search of a long-term deal the Lakers are hesitant to give him.

All four Cavaliers players we’ve mentioned thus far — Garland, Allen, Strus and Hunter — have at least two years left on their deals. At the very least, the Lakers might prefer to reroute Strus or Hunter. Allen, as we’ve covered, would likely be desirable enough as a long-term piece to just take if the chance presents itself.

Garland is the trickiest piece here. He’s a 25-year-old two-time All-Star. Pretty much any team would be thrilled to have him. But he’d also overlap pretty substantially with what the Lakers already have. He’s a small, high-usage guard. That’s not exactly an ideal fit with the defensively limited, high-usage pair of Dončić and Austin Reaves. Garland might be good enough that the Lakers shrug and figure it out later. Maybe they’d trade Reaves for a center in that world. Maybe they’d keep all three and see what happens. 

But it’s also possible that they have such specific plans for their cap space or are so dead set on building around the Dončić-Reaves duo that they might prefer to reroute Garland elsewhere. Surely they’d be able to find a team with expiring contracts and draft picks to trade for Garland, right? The answer is probably yes, but which team exactly that would be is harder to discern. The Magic were an obvious target, but they took their swing on Desmond Bane already. San Antonio was probably interested before acquiring De’Aaron Fox. Maybe the Kings could use Garland as Fox’s long-term replacement? Would the Nets view him as a viable piece to eventually attract a bigger fish?

That’s probably what the Lakers would be trying to do if they didn’t keep Garland. The goal in that scenario would be to refill the coffers with picks and youth that could be redirected for a star who stylistically fits alongside Dončić and Reaves. Those two would be powerful recruiters in the Los Angeles market. They’d probably love to use their 2026 cap space to just sign a star outright, but unless Memphis fails to renegotiate and extend Jaren Jackson Jr. this summer (possible, but unlikely), the safer bet would be using that cap space as a further enticement in a trade. When you’re trying to trade for a star, it really helps to be able to save the other team money.

From an asset perspective, something in this vein makes all the sense in the world for the Lakers. Regardless of what they’d ultimately end up with, they’d be turning a player whose value is almost entirely compressed to within the next year into assets who will help them for several afterward. They’d have to make sure the salaries fit within their bigger-picture plans, but if the Lakers aren’t going to go all-in on the 2025-26 season, as their offseason thus far suggests that they won’t, cashing James out now is probably their best long-term move.

If there’s a concern for the Lakers here, it has more to do with optics than on-court prospects. Dončić is also extension-eligible this offseason. They could not make a James trade of any sort without getting his approval because they simply will not risk him walking away as a 2026 free agent. 

Even if they do get the go-ahead, trading stars of LeBron’s caliber just isn’t in this team’s nature. They kept Kobe Bryant until the end and paid him an exorbitant salary even when it was clear he had little left to give. Think of their core superstars throughout the decades. Bryant, Magic Johnson, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West never wore another uniform. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar started his career with the Bucks, but never left Los Angeles once he became a Laker. The only truly significant Laker ever to leave was Shaquille O’Neal, and that was the result of a feud with Bryant. 

This is a franchise that values its association with superstars. The idea of James retiring in their uniform is something that would have mattered to this team for most of its history. Does the ownership transition from the Buss family to Mark Walter change that? Perhaps. He runs the Dodgers optimally and devoid of sentiment. Maybe his philosophy will be different. But it would be out of character for Jeanie Buss, who will at least nominally retain the team’s governorship, to move James to another team. 

It would also be out of character for James to force a trade if the Lakers don’t want to make one. Remember, despite his Machiavellian reputation, he has never been traded. His legacy in Los Angeles surely matters to him. He fancies himself the greatest player in NBA history. His association with the league’s most iconic franchise makes a difference in such debates. Doing anything to draw attention to his willingness to change teams may even hurt him. Cleveland is probably the only team he could play for at this point that wouldn’t sully his reputation further in the eyes of Michael Jordan’s most ardent supporters. And that’s where we get to our most important question: would the Cavaliers want to do this?

In basketball terms, there’s no easy answer. There isn’t a single example in all of NBA history of a team trading valuable players in their 20s for one in his 40s, even if that player is as accomplished as James. Cleveland won’t be able to keep this team together indefinitely, but retaining youth and depth matters quite a bit in the world that the aprons forces teams to live in. Even if the Cavaliers had to move Garland or Allen down the line, they’d get a lot for them. Any investment in James would go up in smoke in a year or two when he retires. They’d just have to hope that he leaves a trophy behind when he’s gone.

Cleveland may well have won the championship without James if Garland had been healthy in the playoffs, and in a weak Eastern Conference, they’ll be favored to reach the Finals whether they swing such a deal or not. But neither Garland nor Allen have sterling playoff reputations, and recent postseason trends haven’t exactly favored players like them. Small guards like Garland are vulnerable defensively. Centers who can’t shoot can be vulnerable offensively if they aren’t dominant on the glass or near the basket. Allen has been neither in the postseason.

James, even now, is about as close to bulletproof in a playoff context as currently exists. He averaged 25 points, nine rebounds and five assists against Minnesota while holding the Laker defense together practically singlehandedly. A team built around him, Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley would be perfectly designed for the postseason. That’s three high-level positional creators with a ton of defense and shooting still left in the supporting cast. They’d still have the recently acquired Ball and the re-signed Merrill. Someone out of the Strus-Allen-Hunter trio likely remains. Dean Wade is a health risk but great when he plays. Get a single free-agent signing right or hope that a younger player like Craig Porter Jr. or Jaylon Tyson pops and you’re in business. That’s a top-heavy team, but a great one if you assume James maintains last season’s level of play. Maybe that’s not a guarantee, but at this point, even Father Time might need to concede that James is infallible.

From a financial perspective, such a move could even function, stealthily, as a way for the Cavaliers to save a whole lot of money. As we covered, they’d have to duck below the second apron just to make a legal trade. That represents an enormous amount of actual cash where the luxury tax is concerned, and James isn’t under contract beyond the 2025-26 season. If he would consider leaving some money on the table then, Cleveland could solve its long-term tax issues before they even really arise. Cleveland would be short on assets, but it would still have Mitchell and Mobley after James retires. That’s at least a strong foundation. Team president Koby Altman could reload from there with fewer concerns about frozen draft picks or cash-related ownership pressure.

This isn’t just a basketball decision, though. It’s a personal one for the people making it. In 2022, Garland noted that “having our own legacy without having anything with ‘Bron to do with it, that would be pretty cool.” Garland may not be the one making this call, but it’s hard to believe that ownership and the front office wouldn’t feel similarly. Dan Gilbert paid monstrous luxury tax bills to help James compete upon his 2014 return, but he’s still remembered first and foremost for that infamous comic sans letter in July of 2010. The idea of having a championship untainted by their strained relationship likely appeals to him. It surely would for Altman, who built this team from the ground up after James left in 2018.

James was willing to forgive the Cavaliers for their prior transgressions in 2014. He has nothing to apologize for 11 years later, but the ball is no longer in his court. If Cleveland doesn’t want to gut its team for him, nothing else matters. James still controls the situation via his no-trade clause, but it’s going to take two to tango here. If James is as interested in ending his career with the Cavaliers today as he was in 2014, the path theoretically exists. We just don’t know how willing or eager Cleveland is to make the sort of sacrifices it would take to make that dream a reality.