Jim Alexander: This may be the definitive proof that we’re in the dog days of summer, sports news category. The following was an actual headline in The Athletic (also known as the New York Times sports section) earlier this week:
“LeBron James hasn’t had buyout, trade discussions with Lakers, expects to be with team: Sources”
In other words, nothing to report. But that passive-aggressive statement that Rich Paul and Klutch Sports provided on LeBron’s behalf a couple of weeks ago, shortly after LeBron opted into the final year of his contract at $52.6 million, is the gift that keeps on giving.
Really, I can’t imagine that there’s anything to see here. No fire, not even any smoke … although the way things have gone in Southern California this year that may be a bad – no, make that horrible – analogy.
But all of the fevered speculation and conversation centers on a handful of things: Paul mentioned that LeBron still wants to win a championship (at least one) before he walks away, whenever that might be. Meanwhile, this is no longer undisputedly LeBron’s team, not with Luka Doncic as the younger/future face of the franchise – after a transaction, may we add, that blindsided LeBron when it was made. That in itself might have been a statement.
And this is one of the rare occasions that LeBron’s future is not totally under his control. He’s playing out the final year of his contract, and while he does have the right to veto any trade, let’s be honest: Which franchise could handle adding $52.6 million to its payroll this year and not zoom directly into the peril of the second apron?
Mirjam, is this as big a nothing-burger to you as it is to me, or am I missing something?
Mirjam Swanson: It’s summertime offseason junk food. It’s bad-calorie snacking ’cause we’re bored.
As you lay out: Trading LeBron is not impossible, but it would be difficult and almost certainly be dumb – for the Lakers and the potential trade partner … which didn’t stop folks from going nuts over a LeBron-to-Dallas rumor started by some random person on the internet and subsequently shot down by multiple insiders with actual sources giving them actual intel.
That doesn’t mean there can’t be drama. It doesn’t mean that LeBron is happy he wasn’t offered a 1+1 when he opted in this time. And it doesn’t mean he’ll want to finish his career as a Laker, even though I hope he does. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want us to wonder whether he’ll leave for Cleveland. Or New York. Or Dallas. Or Golden State. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy being the main character in our inane offseason debates – ever the nothing-to-see-here-why-are-you-even-looking provocateur who loves lighting the internet on fire with clues and hints that might mean nothing or might mean something … or might mean something in between.
It’s just an offseason buffet of LeBron rumors, and it’s probably not especially good for our health, but it’s also not going to kill us either. We’re all going to indulge sometimes – I mean, we’re writing about it here, aren’t we?
Jim: Mainly this is grist for the Hot Take Industry, and I’m guessing the morning talkers at, for example, ESPN (aka the Worldwide Leader in Self-Importance) are yammering away at it. Guessing, because I don’t watch those morning shows. Argument television doesn’t do a lot for me.
Anyway, our friend at the other paper, Bill Plaschke, made the suggestion that LeBron should go out, when he does, the way Kobe Bryant did in his final season – announce it beforehand and allow the multitudes in cities throughout the league to wish him farewell and salute his greatness. I’m not opposed to that at all. I just think it would be really difficult for LeBron to make that commitment before or early in a season, because he seems to have so much fun keeping us all in suspense.
Meanwhile … let’s stay with hoops. You pointed out to me that The Athletic did a survey of WNBA players, and among the several questions asked was who would be the face of the league in five years. The answers: Caitlin Clark – and JuJu Watkins. This is a reminder of the treasure that we have in our midst, and also of how sad it was to see her go down with that torn ACL against Mississippi State in the NCAA Tournament. The assumption is that she’ll miss this coming season, but watch out in 2026-27.
The margin in that poll, by the way, was Clark 53.8%, JuJu 17.9% and Paige Bueckers 14.1%. Young players do have to earn their way in the WNBA, y’know. I’m also wondering how many of those who voted for Caitlin did so with eye rolls and/or gritted teeth, considering what seems to be – or at least what we’re told is – the jealousy toward Clark among her fellow players.
But consider that JuJu was the only one among the top five who is not currently in the league. That speaks pretty eloquently, doesn’t it?
Mirjam: JuJu’s a star, man.
Obviously, Caitlin is electric and she’s captured America’s attention in a way no women’s basketball player before her has. And Paige is so excellent and fun to watch, and Sabrina Ionescu’s got girls and guys everywhere wearing her signature shoes and Angel Reese is a household name as is A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart …
But in this age of more people knowing more women’s hoopers than ever, Watkins is there at the top of the marquee with Caitlin and Paige – but as a collegian! Who yes, just suffered a serious injury. I really hate that part, but also the painful twist of fate made me realize how incredibly and intensely beloved she is already, in L.A. and outside of it.
I had a friend from a past job who isn’t really a huge women’s basketball fan text me afterward to tell me he was taking a different route to work in downtown L.A. because he couldn’t bear to look at the JuJu billboards on his usual route. And I met a 75-year-old man in Spokane, Washington, wearing a handmade “Wish You Were Here JuJu” shirt to the Super Regional site there who told me he’d only recently started watching women’s basketball – but that he’d “damn near cried” when he watched Watkins get hurt.
That speaks to her game, of course, but also just her “it” factor as a performer and a personality. She’s really uniquely cool – and she’s great. And the women in the WNBA are right about her – she’s absolutely going to be the face of that league in a few years … as is Caitlin, who, yes, deserved to be 100% of the responses and not 53.8%.
As for LeBron – still the Face of the NBA – planning a goodbye tour? I can see him doing that – as well he should – when he’s ready to retire … but this man just made second-team All-NBA and finished sixth in MVP voting! That’s good for a 25-year-old! Dude’s not done! Not done trolling us, not done hooping at a high level.
Jim: OK, so what’s his next contract going to look like?
Meanwhile, for those who missed it, baseball’s All-Star Game turned out to be a pretty good show this week, not the least because the players were again allowed to wear their regular team uniforms, instead of the clown suits they’d been forced to don the last four years.
Ordinariily I have no use for player interviews while those players are actually playing, even in what is an exhibition game. But I will admit that attaching a live microphone to Clayton Kershaw during his two-batter stint in the second inning provided some great stuff. For example, he was fielding suggestions from the broadcast booth on what pitch he should throw, and Fox’s John Smoltz suggested he throw a cutter. “I don’t have a cutter, Smoltzie,” Kershaw said, and followed that with a muttered phrase that may have put the broadcast into PG-13 rated territory.
But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was that they used a “swing-off” – basically a home run contest – to decide a winner after the American League came back to tie the game 6-6. And don’t tell me players don’t care who wins, because players from both teams were standing in front of their dugouts acting like fans as the sluggers did their stuff, with Kyle Schwarber pulling it out for the National League by hitting three homers in his three swings.
But that got me thinking about how the Home Run Derby the day before the game could be improved, or at least how it might be tweaked so the game’s biggest stars like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge might be drawn back into it.
The current format is timed, with batting practice pitchers pumping in one pitch after another and the hitters swinging and swinging and swinging. It’s exhausting, and the stars won’t participate because that unnatural hack-after-hack-after-hack can mess up their swing for the second half of the season. (Saw it happen, too: Joc Pederson in 2015 in Cincinnati finished second to Todd Frazier, but his second half was a mess because of it.)
So my suggestion: Get rid of the timer. Give each guy 20 swings per round – or 15, if it’s really about time constraints – but make it a more normal rhythm, as the pitchers did in the postgame contest Tuesday night. (Including the Dodgers’ Dino Ebel, who might have been the night’s outstanding pitcher for serving up those batting practice meatballs to the NL hitters.)
Get rid of the timer and you’ll get that star quality back, I’d bet. (Shohei himself has suggested as much.) Right now the Home Run Derby is looking more and more like the Slam Dunk Contest at NBA All-Star weekend, the only difference being we don’t have a minor-leaguer taking home the trophy.
Any thoughts, Mirjam, on ways to improve such of these made-for-TV spectacles? Or is it, again, so much sports junk food?
Mirjam: Nah, the home run derby is absolutely fixable! I’m right there with you.
This hack-after-hack stuff is so lame – we can’t even admire the home runs as they leave the park … which is the awesome thing about a home run. Especially the spectacular bombs these guys are hitting.
So the current format not only is exhausting and unnatural and unappealing to the game’s biggest home-run hitting stars, but it defeats the purpose of marveling at a ball launched into the night’s sky back, back, back, back … anyone who watched the 1999 Home Run Derby between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa (yes, I know) will remember the thrill of that event.
I don’t know why anyone thought doing it this way – speed-home-run hitting? – was a good idea, at any point. And I hope the way the game ended compels the powers that be to reconsider and do what you’ve suggested. Slow down, let us enjoy the homers. Let the home run hitters enjoy the homers!
