LeBron James is currently a free agent, and despite the mountains of speculation piling up around him, it’s hard to imagine anyone really knows what he’s going to do. That might even apply to him. The reporting thus far has indicated that he has welcomed pitches from teams around the league. While a few expected favorites have emerged, enough teams seem to believe that they have a realistic chance of signing him that it’s reasonable to assume he’s going into this process with an open mind.
So what is he looking for? When James decided to return for a 24th season, a source familiar with James’ thinking told ESPN that he wanted to play “meaningful, competitive basketball.” We can assume, for the sake of argument, that this rules out noncompetitive teams. Being able to win should therefore be treated as table stakes. But what does a team need beyond that?
The guiding principle, according to virtually everyone involved and reporting on the matters, is happiness. Only James truly knows what happiness means for him. His agent, Rich Paul, recently gave some insight into what that means on his “Game Over” podcast with Max Kellerman.
“This is the first time that LeBron James is making a decision pressure-free,” Paul mentioned. “He’s won already. He’s made good on his promise — he won in L.A. This is strictly for his happiness. What does happiness entail? It’s a number of things. It’s a bucket of happiness. It’s basketball, it’s living, it’s camaraderie, it’s competition. It’s everything.”
How James is going to weigh all of those factors, only he knows. If it’s as simple as picking the team likeliest to win a championship, he’ll hop onto one of the favorites. If where he lives matters most, well, Cleveland probably has the advantage. If he wants ideal golfing conditions, it’s probably Miami. We don’t know if there are deal-breakers here. If he needs a certain-sized city, or a certain type of weather, or a certain set of existing personal connections, the field may be whittled down to only a few contenders.
But if he’s willing to truly keep an open mind, I think the answer here is obvious. I think LeBron James should play for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Here’s my pitch:
The basketball fit
LeBron has a bit of a Goldilocks problem here. He can almost certainly win next season’s championship if he decides he’s just going to play for the best team that will have him. While teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks do not appear to be in open pursuit, it’s hard to imagine any of them would turn him away if he called and mentioned he wanted to play for them.
But think about the idea of “meaningful” basketball. Would it really mean anything if James went to an established favorite and won a preordained championship as essentially a role player? Probably not. He doesn’t want to get branded as a ring-chaser. He’s probably not looking to take the easy way.
Now, he could go to a lesser team and try to raise it up, but the problem he’d encounter in most destinations is that the Thunder, the Spurs and the Knicks are so far ahead of the field that he would realistically struggle to actually compete with them almost anywhere else.
If he joins the Golden State Warriors, barring some stunning blockbuster we can’t foresee, he’d be joining the bones of last year’s Western Conference No. 10 seed. As glitzy as the names would be, the NBA isn’t designed for teams that old anymore. They’d never survive the 82-game regular-season grind. The Cleveland Cavaliers were not a LeBron James away from beating the Knicks in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals, and that was with Dean Wade and Keon Ellis, who have both since left. Who’s defending the ball for that version of the Cavaliers? He wouldn’t be playing “meaningful” basketball for a team with no championship equity.
So we’re looking for a middle ground here: not too good to make a championship easy, not too mediocre to make a championship impossible. Again, I’m going to keep coming back to the idea of “meaningful.” The most meaningful sort of team LeBron James could join would be one that is not capable of winning a championship without him, but would be right in the thick of the race with him.
That describes the Timberwolves. They’ve become the Western Conference’s perpetual bridesmaids, losing to the eventual conference champion three postseasons in a row. The biggest reason for their defeats in all three series was a lack of secondary scoring and shot-creation outside of Anthony Edwards. Karl-Anthony Towns shot 28% from the floor in the first three games of the 2024 Western Conference Finals. Minnesota lost those three games by 13 total points, and they’re probably a big reason the Timberwolves traded him. Julius Randle no-showed the Oklahoma City series two years ago and the San Antonio battle this year. The Spurs in particular were able to double Edwards relentlessly because no one else on the team could punish them for it.
Minnesota traded for LaMelo Ball to address that problem, but remember, he has no real playoff experience and has mostly been terrible in his brief Play-In appearances. The Timberwolves need a steadier hand, especially now that Mike Conley plays for the Boston Celtics.
Adding James would obviously provide one, and the pairing of James and Ball would address by far Minnesota’s biggest offensive flaw over the past few years: its lack of passing. That flaw isn’t for lack of trying. The Timberwolves have ranked seventh, 11th and eighth in passes per game over the past three seasons. Those passes are just fairly aimless. Despite ranking seventh in total passes last season, only the Clippers averaged fewer potential assists per game. It should not be possible to rank seventh in one of those stats and tie for 28th in the other. It happened. Edwards may be a primary ball-handler, but he is not a point guard. Put Ball and James into the mix and he’ll never have to be. That’s 48 minutes of elite playmaking every night.
Removing any sort of playmaking burden from Edwards’ shoulders is only going to make him more lethal everywhere else, and frankly, that was his last notable weakness to begin with. Edwards came into the NBA capable of generating elite rim-pressure. He added an elite 3-point shot over the past several years. Last season, his post-game and mid-range shooting improved dramatically. He’s an elite three-level scorer now, much like Kyrie Irving was next to James in Cleveland. That partnership was so symbiotic because Irving is at his best when he isn’t tasked with point guard-level playmaking responsibilities. James took those off his shoulders and he soared.
Edwards would offensively. He also would defensively. Edwards is capable of great defense. Late in close playoff games, he dials up the effort. He’s asked to do too much offensively every night to sustain that effort for 48 minutes. The less he needs the ball, the more effort he can pour into defense. Fortunately, Minnesota doesn’t need much. Rudy Gobert earned yet another All-Defense selection last season and Jaden McDaniels easily could have. The Timberwolves have an elite rim-protector and they have two potentially elite perimeter defenders. They’ll have to hide Ball, and James can’t take high-leverage matchups for full games anymore, but he is still a genius off-ball defender who can function well in a smaller role and also dial things up for bigger possessions when needed. There’s a real balance here. This version of the Timberwolves would have a chance to be the best offense in the NBA, but still near the top of the league in defense.
Even the starting lineup just makes sense. An All-Star in Ball. An All-Star in Edwards. An ascending two-way star in McDaniels. An All-Star in Gobert. And a LeBron James-shaped hole at power forward. There is not a lineup in all of basketball into which he slides more cleanly. There is not a group of players in the league he would more easily enhance.
James is maybe the greatest hit-ahead transition passer in NBA history. There aren’t many guards in basketball who run the court like Ayo Dosunmu, so James would get him plenty of free buckets on the break. Gobert needs someone to throw him lobs. James just spent five years and change throwing them to Anthony Davis. Once Edwards and Ball find the pick-and-roll chemistry with James that Irving had, blitzing them off of his screens to take away their pull-up jumper becomes effectively impossible. Oh, you’re going to give LeBron James a 4-on-3? Good luck with that.
When Tim Connelly was tasked with upending the Western Conference’s last proto-dynasty, he built a gigantic, defense-first roster to effectively Denver-proof his roster. That group did indeed torture the Nuggets, but the Thunder and the Spurs are the class of the West now. Connelly knew his jumbo-sized front court would no longer cut it. He couldn’t beat the Thunder or Spurs at their own game, so he went the other way and tilted the roster towards defense. James would be the best of both worlds, giving the Timberwolves one of the NBA’s best and most diverse collections of scoring threats while still filling the enormous power forward hole Randle and Naz Reid left behind. This is the right sort of team with the right sort of roster to maximize James at this stage of his career. They have more than enough support to keep him fresh through the regular season, but still need him to scale up his duties when it counts most in the playoffs. This is where LeBron James can play “meaningful” basketball.
The personal fit
James played with Edwards for Team USA. What sort of relationship they had, only they can say, though Edwards seemingly gravitated towards his idol, Kevin Durant. James played with the NBA’s elder Ball brother, Lonzo, but that partnership lasted only a year. James played with Gobert in an All-Star Game once. That’s about all we can say there.
As of right now, the Timberwolves can’t compete with the personal relationships James has elsewhere in the league. He’s familiar with the entire Cleveland organization. He’s played for Erik Spoelstra and Pat Riley before. He has a long history with Stephen Curry and Draymond Green in Golden State, even if he’s never actually been on their team. If those factors are paramount, the Timberwolves lose. I’m going to propose a means of closing the gap here.
Assuming No. 33 pick Isaiah Evans signs for the rookie minimum, the Timberwolves have two open roster spots but only enough hard cap room to sign one more veteran free agent. We’ll make that James. Let’s create a bit more space somehow. Maybe it’s a Josh Green trade. Maybe Dosunmu takes a slight haircut on his contract. Maybe they just trade Evans and roll with 14 rostered players. However it has to happen.
Let’s use that final, non-James roster spot on an overdue Minnesota reunion: Kevin Love. LeBron’s former Cavaliers teammate obviously started his career in Minnesota before getting traded to Cleveland. He played a real role in Utah last season. Maybe he could play a handful of regular-season minutes next year now that the Timberwolves are so much thinner in the frontcourt. Mostly, though, he’d be a designated veteran, a peer to James, and an opportunity for Minnesota fans to reconnect with a former franchise player. Love got to witness LeBron’s Cleveland homecoming. Now, let’s do this in reverse.
There’s another notable role for Minnesota to fill this offseason. Lead assistant coach Micah Nori just took the head job with the Portland Trail Blazers. How exactly Minnesota opts to fill that spot on its bench is not yet clear. Here’s a James-friendly name to consider: Jason Kidd.
Kidd was recently fired as the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks. Before that, he was an assistant under Frank Vogel with the Lakers, where he won a championship with James. The reverence James holds for Kidd goes back much further than that. They were Olympic teammates in 2008. He openly campaigned for Cleveland to acquire Kidd during his playing days. When the two were together with the Lakers, ESPN declared that multiple sources independently claimed that James regards Kidd as “the only person alive who sees the game of basketball with his level of clarity.”
Kidd is a Hall of Famer in his 50s. He might not be willing to take an assistant job at this stage of his career. But holding a prominent assistant coaching position is a great way for a former head coach to stay in the mix for upcoming job openings. Joining the Lakers helped Kidd get the Dallas job two years later. Helping Minnesota contend for a title could help keep him on the radar for whatever jobs open up next season. That he’d once again be able to collaborate with James is just a bonus.
Would these moves close the gap between Minnesota and other suitors? It’s hard to say. The Timberwolves are operating under several disadvantages here. Minneapolis is cold. It’s a small city. Of course, the same can be mentioned of Cleveland on both fronts, so if there is an NBA superstar most likely to be sympathetic to its plight, it would probably be James. There is apparently plenty of indoor golf, but that’s not going to make it anyone’s first choice winter destination. This is a category in which the Timberwolves can only really hope to do the bare minimum. The arguments they can genuinely win are the basketball side above and the legacy component below.
The legacy fit
Paul touched on a number of suitors in his podcast breakdown of LeBron’s free agency, but perhaps the single most notable thing he mentioned was about the defending NBA champions. “If the Knicks hadn’t have won, there wouldn’t even be no board,” Paul mentioned. “He’d be going to the Knicks.”
Obviously, the Knicks hold market appeal that the Timberwolves do not. Rich people love living in New York. Far fewer are eager to pack up for Minnesota. But the Knicks still play in New York. They haven’t moved. They’d probably eagerly welcome James if he offered to play for them. Yet the championship changed the equation, and it’s worth interrogating why.
There would be inevitable ring-chasing backlash, of course, and if the Knicks failed to repeat as champions with James on the team, bad-faith pundits would surely blame their defeat on him. But, like Paul mentioned, James is under no pressure at this point in his career. It’s hard to imagine that’s what’s swaying him.
My guess goes back to that idea we’ve touched on so many times: James wants to play “meaningful” basketball. There was no pursuit in the entire NBA more meaningful than ending New York’s 53-year championship drought. It was the longest drought any of the NBA’s most historic franchises had ever endured. Breaking it turned Jalen Brunson into a living god in the greatest city in the world. That concept had to appeal to James. Joining the pre-championship Knicks, in essence, would be one last quest. A final mountain to climb. A final challenge to face.
Well, the Knicks are off the board now, and as I look around to the other presumed suitors, there’s no true analogue. The Philadelphia 76ers haven’t won a championship in 43 years, but Philadelphia isn’t New York, and besides, the Eagles have won recently enough that the city isn’t exactly championship-starved. The Knicks are unique. New York is divided among team lines in every sport except basketball. The Nets technically exist, but have only been in the city for a decade or so and don’t factor meaningfully into New York’s basketball culture. The Knicks are the only team in any sport that unites New York. A 76ers ring, by comparison, just feels small.
If he returns to Cleveland, he’s just retreading old ground. The same is true for the Miami Heat, where he’d probably be the third fiddle behind Giannis Antetokounmpo, who’s just a better player at this point, and Bam Adebayo, who’s the only Heat lifer of the three. If he wins a title with the Denver Nuggets, it will always be viewed as Nikola Jokić’s ring. Nobody steals shine from Stephen Curry in Golden State. Kevin Durant can vouch for that. All four of these teams are somewhat recent champions.
The Timberwolves have never won one. Minneapolis hasn’t as a city since 1991, when the Twins won their second World Series. That drought doesn’t quite capture the specific anxiety of being a Minnesota Timberwolves fan in a market-obsessed league like the NBA.
The Timberwolves have historically been the team that stars leave, not one they join. Stephon Marbury demanded a trade in just his third NBA season. Kevin Garnett spent more than a decade trying and failing to win the Timberwolves a title. He got one on his first try in Boston. Love never even made the playoffs in Minnesota. He reached the Finals four years in a row in Cleveland. Heck, Minnesota even loses superstar teams. The 17-time world champion Los Angeles Lakers were born in Minneapolis. They even won five championships there. They went west in 1960 and never looked back.
A big part of being happy in your workplace is feeling appreciated. On some level, especially after the Luka Dončić trade, it seemed as though that was lacking in Los Angeles. It’s hard to imagine any fan base appreciating a star of this magnitude more than the one that keeps losing anyone who ever comes close. Sure, there’s Cleveland, but their love for James is eternal. Anywhere else, he’s essentially a mercenary. In Minnesota, he’s something symbolically bigger.
LeBron James is inarguably the NBA’s biggest active star and is quite possibly the most famous American athlete of the century. He just spent eight years with, of all teams, the Lakers. There is literally no more Hollywood athlete on Earth. For him to choose Minnesota, not just the place, but the specific franchise with this specific history, well, it’s hard to argue that there is a more “meaningful” choice available to him this offseason. He’s already won with the Cavaliers, and anyone can win with the Heat or the Lakers.
But if he won with the Timberwolves, of all teams, that gives him something that no other American professional athlete has ever achieved. A Minnesota championship would give him titles with four different teams. No NBA, MLB or NFL player has ever done that. If ending New York’s drought would have been the perfect challenge to close his career on, bringing a championship to a team that has never won one, essentially proving that he is capable of turning any team into a champion, would have to be a close second.
The overwhelming majority of fans have already made up their mind in the “greatest player of all time” debate, but if there are any undecided voters, James going four-for-four in leading different teams to championships might be the only thing capable of standing up to Michael Jordan’s six-for-six Finals record. You could certainly argue four-for-four is more impressive.
Jordan won all six of his titles with the Chicago Bulls. When a diminished version of him tried to lift up the Washington Wizards, he couldn’t even make the playoffs. James is several years older than Jordan was in Washington. He’s not his old self anymore either, but from a legacy perspective, it’s hard to envision that affecting the perception of another James championship push all that much.
Edwards is not Jokić or Curry or Antetokounmpo. He’s not yet an MVP winner or champion. If he gets there, James can always say he did his part to help guide him along the way. If LaMelo Ball sheds his carnival point guard reputation and becomes a serious, winning player, James can take a bit of the credit for that as well. Edwards is a legitimate possible “face of the league” successor to James. Ball is the TikTok generation’s favorite player, a highlight machine who captivates fans too young to remember James at his apex. If LeBron can attach himself forever to their stories, he could earn the sort of reverence from those younger fans that Jordan has from older ones. It goes without saying that a championship could make him the first player in NBA history to get his number retired by a team after only playing one season for them. He might even get a statue as well.
If all of this doesn’t add up to “meaningful” basketball, then I don’t know what does. James could live in nicer cities. He could wear more sentimental uniforms. He could even probably get to better teams if he wanted to badly enough. But if James is looking to make the most meaningful possible choice for the end of his career, the answer is playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
