Did Jeanie Buss Consider Trading LeBron James to the Clippers? Bombshell Report Claims It So

In an alternate world, LeBron James would still be playing in Los Angeles. Wearing a Clippers uniform, that is.

According to ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, Jeanie Buss was considering that possibility nearly four years ago. In a bombshell report published on Wednesday, Holmes claimed that the former Lakers owner was weighing her options shortly after James received a two-year, $97.1 million extension prior to the 2022–2023 season.

“In 2022, in the aftermath of the [Russell] Westbrook trade, multiple people said Jeanie privately mused about not giving James a contract extension and, later that year, even about trading James, with the LA Clippers floated as a possibility,” Holmes wrote.

For anyone trying to fathom why Buss would even think about trading the iconic player considered in some circles as the GOAT, Holmes lays out the narrative.

Reportedly, Buss had been unhappy with LBJ right from the very start, rejecting the notion that he was “a savior for a floundering franchise” when he jumped ship from Cleveland in 2018.

According to Holmes, Buss perceived that James’ “oversized ego” (not to mention the influence that he and Klutch Sports were said to be wielding) was getting in the way of the Lakers’ improvement. The trade to acquire Westbrook in 2021 was propped up as an example, and when this experiment didn’t work, Buss “privately bristled” as James appeared to distance himself from the decision to get Westbrook in the first place.

And so it was that, just two years removed from the King leading the Lakers to their 17th championship in franchise history, Buss was mulling a scenario in which James would no longer play for her team. She even considered not giving him the contract extension; after James inked his new contract in September 2022, thoughts of trading him then began to percolate in Buss’s mind.

Though James is one of the most popular players to ever put on the purple and gold, his relationship with Laker Nation is complicated, to say the least. (It certainly does not surpass the reverence that Lakers fans have for the late, great Kobe Bryant.) Now that Holmes’ report has come to light, it seems that there are deeper wounds below the surface when it comes to LBJ’s dynamic with perhaps the most powerful woman in the history of the organization.