{"id":226052,"date":"2025-08-12T10:17:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T10:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/226052\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T10:17:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T10:17:29","slug":"lebron-james-back-to-cleveland-cavs-stephen-a-muses-on-first-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/226052\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James back to Cleveland Cavs? Stephen A muses on ‘First Take’"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESPN pundit Stephen A Smith was back on his soap box on “First Take,” this time musing about a possible Cleveland Cavs<\/a>-LeBron James reunion to cap the future Hall of Famer’s legendary career.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d have a better chance at winning a championship in Cleveland than he would in LA,\u201d Smith said in part.<\/p>\n

James, an Akron native, already made a return to Cleveland after leaving via the infamous “Decision” and taking his talents to South Beach where he won two titles with the Miami Heat<\/a>. The 2015-16 Cavs<\/a> won a title with LeBron, a young Kyrie Irving and prime Kevin Love on the roster.<\/p>\n

“First Take” co-host Marcus Spears didn’t seem amused by Smith’s musing, delivering a healthy dose of side-eye to his colleague throughout the rant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf LeBron James came back to Cleveland, you\u2019re the favorites to come out of the East,\u201d Smith added.<\/p>\n

Donovan Mitchell: Is Cleveland Cavs All-Star Donovan Mitchell engaged? An Instagram post suggests he is<\/a><\/p>\n

Last season, the Cavs finished as the top seed in the Eastern Conference with a 64-18 record, but they lost in the Eastern Conference Semis to the Indiana Pacers<\/a>, who eventually reached the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

Despite his age (he\u2019ll celebrate his 41st birthday in December), James continues to play at an elite level. In 70 games (all starts) for the Lakers last season, the four-time MVP averaged 24.4 points, 8.2 assists and 7.8 rebounds per game with 7.7 win shares.<\/p>\n

Of course, James already exercised his $52.6 million player option to return to the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> for the 2025-26 season, meaning he\u2019d only be able to reunite with the Cavs via trade.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters further, James has a no-trade clause in his contract. His agent, Rich Paul, seemed to put trade rumors to bed<\/a> recently by pointing that out, but he did say, \u201cIt\u2019s up to (LeBron) if he wants to get traded.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any case, there’s a finite amount of NBA games remaining for James. And while it’s true that he could likely dictate how his career ends, this just seems like more of Stephen A being Stephen A by drumming up a narrative he’d like to see play out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN pundit Stephen A Smith was back on his soap box on “First Take,” this time musing about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[241,59,299,72,7,306,355,617,305,193,3846,74,130,133,144,131,113,126,517,300,516,185,71,86,298,150,295,189,6,62,67,61,81,114,6176,66,83,1174,2603,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-226052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-a","9":"tag-affiliate","10":"tag-angeles","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-basketball","13":"tag-cavaliers","14":"tag-celebrities","15":"tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","16":"tag-cleveland","17":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","18":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-espn","21":"tag-espn-inc","22":"tag-heat","23":"tag-inc","24":"tag-indiana","25":"tag-indiana-pacers","26":"tag-james","27":"tag-lakers","28":"tag-lebron","29":"tag-lebron-james","30":"tag-local","31":"tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","32":"tag-los","33":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","34":"tag-miami","35":"tag-miami-heat","36":"tag-nba","37":"tag-neutral","38":"tag-news","39":"tag-overall","40":"tag-overall-neutral","41":"tag-pacers","42":"tag-smith","43":"tag-sports","44":"tag-sports-news","45":"tag-stephen","46":"tag-stephen-a-smith","47":"tag-u0026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226052","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=226052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}