A Hollywood Ending, page 29
Everyone in the building stood.
LeBron took three dribbles to his left.
He rose up over Thunder forward Kenrich Williams.[*5]
He lofted the ball into the air.
“There it is!” bellowed TNT’s Brian Anderson on the game broadcast as LeBron notched points 38,387 and 38,388. “LeBron stands alone.”
The game was stopped to acknowledge the moment. LeBron threw his arms toward the sky and jogged to the other end of the court, where his family was seated. He didn’t dance or strut or unveil a choreographed celebration. There was no Jordanesque pose or Kobe-like scowl. He took a deep breath and put his hands on his knees. A true smile—the sort he only rarely flashed in public, one radiating a pure, boyhood-type joy—stretched across his face.
As the crowd chanted “M-V-P,” LeBron waved his mom, wife, two sons, and daughter onto the court. He and Rich Paul embraced. A highlight video played on the jumbotron. Abdul-Jabbar and Adam Silver walked to center court.
“LeBron, you are the NBA’s all-time scoring leader,” Silver said.
LeBron squinted to hold back his tears.
“I just want to say thank you to the Laker faithful. You guys are one of a kind,” LeBron said to the crowd. He thanked his wife and daughter and sons and friends and family and mom and “everybody that’s ever been a part of this run with me the last twenty years.” He thanked the NBA and Silver but also “the late, great David Stern,” Silver’s predecessor. It was as humbled as he’d ever come off in public. He seemed to be at a loss for words.
“I thank you guys so much for allowing me to be a part of something I’ve always dreamed about,” he said.
He ended his speech the way he ended so many of his speeches: “So, fuck, man. Thank you, guys.”
Tears welled in his eyes as he made the rounds to various luminaries.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lakers public address announcer Lawrence Tanter said, “at this time, join us in celebrating LeBron James.” Unlike the night when he had passed Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list, they did just that.
In the lead-up to the moment, some members of the coaching staff had expressed frustration to each other and to friends across the league that LeBron’s record chase was overshadowing everything. And it was. But for Jeanie, that was a feature, not a bug. And in a slog of a season, it was nice to have something worth celebrating.
* * *
• • •
LeBron might have won the night, but, fittingly, the Lakers lost the game. Part of it was that LeBron, visibly gassed after the ceremony, took just two shots in the fourth quarter, hitting only one.
But the seeds of the loss were planted earlier. The defense was nonexistent from the start, and late in the second quarter Westbrook had shown up Ham by lingering on the court after being subbed out. He then got into an argument with assistant coach Phil Handy on the sidelines. As the Lakers entered the locker room at halftime, trailing 76–66, Ham told an assistant coach that he was about to lace into the team, and especially Westbrook, and that they should have a security member stationed outside the door just in case things went south. Ham did, and Westbrook shouted back, and the exchange grew so heated and loud that their voices could be heard in the hallway.
The Lakers returned to the court and, after ceding the night to LeBron, lost 133–130.
If it wasn’t clear beforehand, it was now: Westbrook had to go.
“There was just so much heat on him from the beginning of the season,” Troy Brown Jr., a wing the Lakers had signed in the offseason, said. “Everyone was scapegoating him, and you could just see it getting to him. We spent the whole season trying to get him, LeBron, and AD on the same page, and it just didn’t work.”
The next day, Pelinka found a taker. As part of a three-team deal involving Utah and Minnesota, the Lakers sent the Jazz a package built around Westbrook and their 2027 first-round pick. In return, they got sharpshooting guard Malik Beasley, defensive stalwart Jarred Vanderbilt, and, perhaps most notably, D’Angelo Russell, their former lottery pick who was averaging 17.9 points and 6.2 assists for the Timberwolves and shooting an impressive 39 percent from deep.[*6] These moves had come in addition to a deal with the Wizards in late January, in which Pelinka had traded Kendrick Nunn and three second-round picks for Rui Hachimura, a talented 2019 lottery pick who’d put up decent numbers in Washington but had never popped.
In the span of a few weeks, Pelinka had turned over nearly half the roster. Six players had gone out, six players had come in. The Lakers had gotten younger and better. They’d added shooting and playmaking.
The most interesting part, though, was what these moves suggested about the Lakers’ future. All six players traded away were on expiring contracts. Had the Lakers held on to them, they could have entered the offseason with enough cap space to possibly pursue a star. But instead of waiting to roll the dice in the summer, Pelinka, using a strategy he billed as “pre-agency”—a term Jeanie found clever—figured the Lakers would be better off trading for players who they hoped would stick around.
“We very intentionally planned these moves to provide optionality in July,” he told reporters after the deadline. “You could really start to see a young core crystalizing that gives us optionality for the future, but also gives us an improved team now to finish our last 26 games with this season.”
Over the next two months, the Lakers looked like a different team. Davis, after spending January and February playing so passively that Lakers coaches noticed LeBron growing frustrated during games, upped his scoring and defensive activity. With him healthy and spry, and with the long and bouncy Vanderbilt by his side, the Lakers defended at a top-five rate. D’Angelo Russell played some of the most efficient basketball of his career, and his shooting and playmaking both opened the floor and lightened LeBron’s load. No one grumbled over minutes or roles. The influx of young players added a burst of energy and lifted the mood around the team; during LeBron’s postgame scrums, reporters were often forced to shout out their questions over a symphony of goat noises emanating from his teammates.[*7]
And then there was the continued emergence of Austin Reaves, who, nearly two years after going undrafted, had taken over Westbrook’s role with the Lakers and done more with it than the future Hall of Famer ever had.
A Kobe fan growing up, Reaves always dreamed of playing for the Lakers. He skipped parties and school dances so that he could chase that dream, but as a skinny white kid who grew up on a farm in Newark, Arkansas (population as of the 2020 census: 1,880), he wasn’t a prospect who jumped out to college recruiters. Wichita State, however, was intrigued, and gave Reaves a scholarship. In two years with the Shockers, he developed into a knockdown shooter. He then transferred to Oklahoma for a bigger role. There, he developed into one of the top pick-and-roll players in college basketball.
In March 2021, Reaves decided to forgo his final year of college eligibility and enter the NBA draft. With most analysts pegging him as a mid-to-late second-round pick, he and his agents, Aaron Reilly and Reggie Berry, decided to take fate into their own hands. They told any team that inquired about taking him in the second round to do so only if they were offering a guaranteed deal. If not, they weren’t interested; they’d rather Reaves go undrafted and then take their chances on the two-way market. It was a bold strategy, especially coming from a prospect of Reaves’s stature and a pair of young and inexperienced agents.
At first, Reaves was unsure. The dream was to be drafted—why would he turn that down? But Reilly and Berry were thinking bigger. “It was all about playing the long game,” Reaves recalled.
The day before the draft, Pelinka called Reilly. The Lakers scouting department—which for years had excelled at finding NBA talent outside the lottery—liked Reaves, and Pelinka wanted to offer him a two-year deal. That night, Reaves, his agents, and his brother joined his father at his cabin. Sitting around a fire, they talked it all out. Reilly and Berry believed the Lakers would be the best fit for Reaves. They thought he boasted both the mindset and skill set to thrive alongside LeBron, and they liked that the roster was full of aging vets, meaning at some point Reaves would likely get a chance.
Reilly drafted a text to send to Pelinka. He wrote that they were ready to commit to a two-way deal.
Then he paused. Was Reaves sure?
Reaves grabbed the phone and sent the message himself.
That August, Reaves played for the Lakers’ summer league team. A few games in, Lakers coaches told friends around the league that Reaves was a steal. A couple months later, Reaves impressed his new teammates at LeBron’s mini-camp. The Lakers then converted his two-way contract to a standard deal. That December, he hit a game-winning three-pointer to beat the Mavericks in overtime. In April, he put up a triple-double in the Lakers’ final game of the season. He came back the next year even better, and after the All-Star break became the Lakers’ third-best player. He nearly doubled his scoring (10.5 points per game to 17.6), more than doubled his assists (2.2 to 5.5), and did all that while improving his efficiency. He was crafty with the ball and had an uncanny ability to draw fouls, but, more than that, he was fearless.
“AR YOU A BAD MUTHA…SHUT YO MOUTH!!! You toooooo TOUGH!! ,” LeBron tweeted after Reaves scored 35 points to lead the Lakers to a late-March win over the Magic.
Reaves had stepped up at the perfect time. The previous month LeBron tore a tendon in his right foot, sidelining him for 13 games. The injury was so severe that two doctors had told him that without surgery he wouldn’t be able to play. He got a third opinion—“I went to the LeBron James of feet,” he’d later say—who told him he could return to the court, and in late March he did. Despite the pain, he averaged 25.3 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 6.1 assists in the Lakers’ final eight games. They won six of them, and 16 of their 24 after the All-Star break, a streak that propelled them back into the opening round of the play-in tournament. There, they knocked off the Timberwolves in overtime, 108–102. They then took down the second-seeded Grizzlies in six games, setting up a high-profile second-round matchup with Steph Curry and the Warriors. They took them down in six games, too. The Lakers had gone from 2–10 to the Western Conference finals. They were just four wins away from what would be one of the more improbable trips to the finals in league history.
But first, they’d have to once again go through the Nuggets. And unlike three seasons earlier, the Lakers would no longer have the best player on the floor. That moniker belonged to Nikola Jokić, who, in the years since their Western Conference finals matchup, had won two MVPs.
The Lakers had no answer for him. They tried guarding Jokić, straight up; he scored at will. They tried sending help; he’d find teammates for open dunks or threes. They tried mixing things up; he was always one step ahead, as if he had access to some sort of time machine that allowed him to see how and where the defense was moving before it did. The Lakers lost Game 1 by six points and Game 2 by five. They fell in Game 3 by 11 points but, despite being down 3–0, came out fighting two nights later. LeBron scored 31 points in the first half, and the Lakers led by 15 entering the break. Then Jokić took control. He scored 13 points in the third quarter to go along with 10 rebounds and three assists, and the Nuggets outscored the Lakers by 20.
Still, the Lakers kept fighting. With 5:02 left in the game, Davis tied the game with a dunk.
With four seconds remaining, the Lakers had the ball down just two. LeBron attacked the hoop coming out of a timeout. The Nuggets swarmed him and blocked the shot, bringing the Lakers’ run to an end.
It was a disappointing finish, but the future once again looked bright. The late-season overhaul had injected life into the franchise. The Lakers had LeBron and Davis, as always, but also Reaves looked like a budding star, Ham looked like the right coach, and Pelinka looked like someone deserving of the keys to the franchise.
In the span of just a few months, the Lakers had gone from chasing mediocrity to competing for a title. They fell short of their goal, but they’d also accomplished more than anyone thought they could.
Skip Notes
*1 The rest of that quote: “In terms of an official capacity, in the NBA, you have to be very clear as to who can negotiate on your behalf and who can’t. So he doesn’t have that official designation. But in terms of his support, his wisdom, his insight, I freely call on him as needed.”
*2 “Normal people keep the world going, but those who dare to be different lead us into tomorrow,” was what he told NBA reporter Shams Charania when sharing the news. “I’ve made my decision to opt in. See you in the fall.” How exactly signing on to earn $36.9 million for a season of playing basketball made him a person leading society “into tomorrow” was unclear.
*3 I guess I need to add a definition here for the boomers: “cap” means “lie.” I’ll also confess that the first time I heard the phrase, I had to look it up.
*4 The extension was for two years and $97.1 million. The second year a player option.
*5 Forget the scoring record, though. My favorite part about this play was the blissfully unaware Lakers center Thomas Bryant cutting to the hoop, parking under the rim, and calling for the ball as LeBron went to work. Just incredible stuff. I urge you to go watch.
*6 Funny story: A few months earlier, before a Timberwolves-Heat game, I had asked Russell if he was open to doing an interview about his time with the Lakers for this book. I told him there was no rush, and that my only aim with the book was to make sure it was accurate and properly captured all the various perspectives, and that I could send all the details to the team’s PR staff. I had a whole speech ready. His response? “I got nothing good to say about them, I don’t care about them. Let’s just do it now.” That was December 26, 2022. Less than two months later, he was a Laker again.
*7 As in: LeBron is the GOAT, greatest of all time.
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Not everyone in the Lakers organization appeared to be inspired by the team’s late-season turnaround.
Addressing the media after the Game 4 loss to the Nuggets, LeBron, leaning back into his chair and, with hat brim pulled low, looked tired. He sounded tired, too, his voice softer and lower than usual. It was understandable. He was thirty-eight years old and had just played all but 40 seconds of a grueling playoff game, and had averaged nearly 43 minutes per game throughout the series, and had done it all with a torn tendon in his foot. And yet, despite it all, there remained something jarring about seeing the NBA’s Superman looking defeated.
First, LeBron commended the Nuggets for being the best team he’d faced since joining the Lakers. Then, despite multiple reporters pointing out the team’s incredible end-of-season surge, he declined to claim any sort of moral victory. “We had a great run,” LeBron said, “but we fell short of our goal and our goal is to win championships.” Then he demurred when asked how confident he was about the talent on the roster going forward. “I mean…I’m not quite sure what the roster will look like next year,” he said. He pointed out that multiple players were on expiring deals.
The last question came from Fox Sports’ Melissa Rohlin.
“On a personal level,” she asked, “how would you evaluate the season that you had?”
“Um,” he said.
He paused for a few seconds.
He rambled through some jumbled thoughts.
He paused again.
“It was a very challenging season,” he said.
“It was pretty cool, a pretty cool ride…I don’t know, it was okay.”
The shield was coming down.
“I don’t like to say it’s a successful year because I don’t play for anything besides winning championships at this point in my career,” he added. “You know, I don’t get a kick out of making a conference [finals] appearance. I’ve done it. A lot. And it’s not fun to me to not be able to be a part of getting to the finals. But we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens going forward. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Then he dropped something unexpected.
“I’ve got a lot to think about, to be honest. Just for me personally going forward with the game of basketball, I’ve got a lot to think about.”
The press conference concluded. Just about thirty minutes later, Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes tweeted that, according to “league sources,” retirement was “under consideration” for LeBron. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Dave McMenamin had followed up with LeBron after the press conference and, not long after, published part of their conversation.
“When you say you got to think about stuff, what thread should we be pulling on that?” McMenamin had asked him.
“If I want to continue to play,” LeBron replied.
“As in next year?”
“Yeah.”
“You would walk away?”
“I got to think about it.”
Few around the NBA, in the media, or in the public believed LeBron was actually done. He had spent the previous few years talking about his desire to play alongside his older son, Bronny, who was a year away from being draft eligible. Was he really willing to give up that dream after coming so close? And would he really walk away without a farewell tour?
Two months later, while accepting an award at the ESPYs, LeBron confirmed that he was indeed returning. “I don’t care how many more points I score or what I can or cannot do on the floor,” he said. “The real question for me is, ‘Can I play without cheating this game?’ The day I can’t give everything on the floor is the day I’ll be done. Lucky for you guys, that day is not today.” But the fact that LeBron had suggested that he might step away, even if it was just a momentary reaction to a crushing loss and a taxing season, was telling. The end was close. He could feel it. It was time to prepare for life after basketball and write the final chapter of his career.
