Rich Paul gave advance notice to both the Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James' teammates before releasing a statement about James' championship aspirations alongside news that the superstar was exercising his $52.6 million player option for the 2025-26 season. Paul's comments immediately sparked speculation that James could be exploring a potential trade from the Lakers, though rival teams were caught off guard by the development and had no prior indication such a move was being considered.
"I have been told by Rich he made it very well known to Luka and his representation, as well as the Lakers that these statements were coming," said Brian Windhorst on Monday's episode of The Hoop Collective Podcast. "That this was done on a fully professional level and there is nothing meant to surprise anybody.
"Speaking of surprising, however, hen this statement came out, I began to call teams. And I don't want to get into the who and what and who I talked to, but let's just say I identified the handful of teams that I could see LeBron trying to be traded to. I'm not going to talk about which teams I talked to, but I did not find a team who was prepared for this. In other words, all of them that I talked to, I didn't talk to 29 teams, I talked to a handful of teams and they were all caught flat-footed by this."
The Cleveland Cavaliers, who have been linked with a potential James return at various times, were conducting offseason business such as trading for Lonzo Ball and re-signing Sam Merrill that would be highly unlikely to be compatible with exploring a trade for James.
"I think the important thing is the Cavs were making trades and signing players to contract extensions on Saturday," added Windhorst. "They were not preparing to try to trade for LeBron on Sunday."
Windhorst also spoke with the agents of multiple players in the league who could theoretically be traded for James straight up.
"I also talked to agents of players and again I'm not looking for aggregation here—but there's a few players in the league you can trade LeBron for in a one-on-one scenario and I've talked to some of those agents and they in some cases talked to the teams of their players' teams and I've found nothing indicating there was anything afoot here. In terms of a transaction, in terms of a trade."
Windhorst also spoke with Paul on Sunday evening with James' agent standing by his statements.
"LeBron is very very likely not getting traded," concluded Windhorst.
