Even if James is not retiring, he is just 1,325 points behind Abdul-Jabbar for first on the N.B.A.’s career scoring list, giving the Lakers an opportunity to cash in on that chase through apparel and other such sales. James has scored at least that many points in every season except 2020-21, when he played in just 45 games because of injuries. (The season was shortened by 10 games, to 72, because of the coronavirus pandemic.)
Non-basketball factors make up “a small percentage” of decision making on contracts, said Rod Thorn, a former N.B.A. front office executive, who drafted Jordan with the Chicago Bulls. The Lakers, he said, want to be a strong basketball team because they have “a big rival on their doorstep” in the Los Angeles Clippers, who are expected to leave their shared arena by the 2024-25 season for their own venue.
“It’s still a Laker town, but the Clippers may eclipse them as a team,” Thorn said, adding: “They want to have a great team. That’s how they get to where they want to go. That’s how they maximize the money they can take in. That’s how they maximize their brand.”
Of course, if the Lakers continue to underwhelm, as they did last season, James’s contract could draw criticism much like Bryant’s extension did, even though James led the Lakers to a championship in 2020. Jeanie Buss, Jerry Buss’s daughter and the majority owner of the Lakers, declined to comment for this article. But James has long escaped the clutches of critics, and the Lakers have shown that, in special cases, they are willing to invest in their stars.
“If we go back, it was Kobe, it was Magic, it was Kareem,” Erving said. “It was Wilt. It was Jerry West. Elgin Baylor was the greatest — he was my favorite. So they’ve always had a guy who fans locally and globally could identify with, and LeBron is that guy for the Lakers.”
