their ESPN colleague Shams Charania<\/a>\u00a0after James picked up his $52.6 million player option for next season has led several rival executives to wonder if James is trying to pressure Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka into leveraging assets to make more “win-now” deals or at least hinting that he would be open to the right trade.<\/p>\n\u201cLeBron wants to compete for a championship,\u201d Paul told Charania. \u201cWe understand the difficulty in winning now while preparing for the future. We do want to evaluate what\u2019s best for LeBron at this stage in his life and career. He wants to make every season he has left count, and the Lakers understand that, are supportive and want what\u2019s best for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
James has a no-trade clause in his expiring contract, meaning he can dictate his next destination or at least must be consulted for any deal.<\/p>\n
Last year, Lopez averaged 13.0 points on .509\/.373\/.826 shooting splits, 5.0 rebounds, 1.9 blocks, 1.8 assists and 0.6 steals while playing in 80 games for the 48-34 Bucks. But he was utterly exposed by now-Bucks starting center Myles Turner in the playoffs. Turner used his mobility and athleticism to utterly dominate Lopez on both ends of the floor, prompting head coach Doc Rivers to desperately insert Bobby Portis into his starting lineup, ahead of Lopez, for a pivotal Game 5 clash against Turner’s Indiana Pacers.<\/p>\n
MORE NEWS:Surprise West lottery team preparing trade bid for Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After seven years with the Milwaukee Bucks, free agent center Brook Lopez departed in free agency this summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[7,507,2949,369,559,130,123,9473,126,532,1137,4034,192,4032,185,251,135,150,4033,4031,121,367,6,9664,564],"class_list":{"0":"post-163993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bobby-portis","10":"tag-brian-windhorst","11":"tag-brook-lopez","12":"tag-clippers","13":"tag-espn","14":"tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","15":"tag-hometown-team","16":"tag-indiana-pacers","17":"tag-ivica-zubac","18":"tag-l-a-clippers","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-la-clippers","21":"tag-laclippers","22":"tag-lebron-james","23":"tag-los-angeles","24":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","25":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","26":"tag-losangeles","27":"tag-losangelesclippers","28":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","29":"tag-myles-turner","30":"tag-nba","31":"tag-ramona-shelburne","32":"tag-rich-paul"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114836503797592813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}