LeBron James has opted into his $52.6 million player option for the 2025-26 season with the Los Angeles Lakers. But speculation continues after Rich Paul’s comments suggested LeBron hasn’t fully closed the door on leaving if a better chance to win comes along.
For now, LeBron is on track to open the season with the Lakers. They still have Luka Doncic and are actively looking to add a center, which signals they’re serious about competing. But if things don’t fall into place eventually and LeBron starts thinking about one more move, you have to ask which team gives LeBron the structure and talent he wants at this stage.
Fred Katz of The Athletic laid out a few landing spots, and one of them was the Golden State Warriors. Some fans may not like it considering LeBron’s history with the Warriors, but sharing the floor with Stephen Curry to close out his career might make sense in a full-circle kind of way. To get there, Katz believes the Warriors would have to move Jimmy Butler to make the deal work.
“Golden State has one obvious offer for James: Jimmy Butler for the quadragenarian.
Butler makes a tad more than James does, marking the trade legal, though if it were constructed this way, it would hard cap the Lakers at the first apron, since they’d be absorbing more money than they send out in a deal. If the Lakers were fine with that, they could execute the one-for-one trade. However, they may want to maintain flexibility, which they could do somewhat easily.
Golden State and Los Angeles could find a third team willing to take on one of the Lakers’ minimum salaries (say, Jordan Goodwin’s) without giving any salary back. This way, the total money leaving the purple and gold is above Butler’s incoming salary.”
