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Lakers' Anticipation Builds as LeBron James Ponders Retirement or One More Season
Nearly the Entire Lakers Team Attends Exit Interviews, Offering LeBron James Ample Time to Reflect on Future
With coach Darvin Ham and vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka on Tuesday.
LeBron James, a day after telling ESPN he will consider retirement this summer after being swept out of the Western Conference finals, is being afforded all the time he needs from his team to contemplate his future.
"We'll look forward to those conversations when the time is right," Pelinka said. "But I will say this: LeBron has given as much to the game of basketball as anyone who's ever played. And when you do that, you earn a right to decide whether you're going to give more.
"I think sometimes we put athletes, entertainers, on a pedestal, but they're humans and just like us. They have inflection points in their career, and our job as a Laker is to support any player on our team if they reach a career inflection point ... and really providing nothing but support for him. Obviously, our hope would be that his career continues, but we want to again just give him the time."
"It'd be crazy to see him away from the game, especially when I feel like he has a lot more in the tank," D'Angelo Russell said.
As Troy Brown Jr. added, "I feel like that's human nature to be his age and be playing at the level that he's playing at putting his body through that much work. I mean, I don't blame him for feeling that way. Personally, for me, I feel like because of his love of the game, he will continue to play."
The Lakers' campaign started with five straight losses in the regular season and ended with four straight losses to the Denver Nuggets in the conference finals, but Ham said his first year on the job has only set the franchise up for success going forward.
"Make no mistake about it, this is not just a one-shot deal," Ham said. "We're going to be around; we're going to be a problem to be dealt with. I can guarantee you that."
James is under contract for next season -- and coming off a campaign in which he was named to the All-NBA third team -- but 2022-23 took its toll.
A source close to James called it a "raw time" for the forward. James is digesting a season that went from disastrous, with him suffering a foot injury that cost him a month late in the campaign; to thrilling
as the Lakers upset the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round then dispatched the defending champion Golden State Warriors in the second;
to devastating, as his 40 points in 48 minutes weren't enough to lift L.A. to a win in Monday's Game 4 against the Nuggets.
Pelinka "Clearly, he's got the right recipe because to be able to go from doctor opinions that are saying, 'Oh, your season may be over' to ending the way he did last night is breathtaking,"
Lakers will give James his space, Pelinka said that as long as the league's all-time leading scorer is on board, the franchise will continue to play through James and Anthony Davis as its building blocks
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