We have one more rumor to add to that list.<\/p>\n
On Friday, ESPN\u2019s Tim McMahon<\/a> said on NBA Today that there\u2019s \u201crampant speculation\u201d around the league that James will sign with Cleveland for a potential retirement tour this summer.<\/p>\n At this point, it feels like LeBron will be returning home to Cleveland unless he retires after this season. What that would look like from a salary perspective remains to be seen.<\/p>\n The Cavs are currently over the second apron. They would not have access to the full mid-level exception unless they got under both aprons and then cut additional salary to carve out a spot for that exception. There\u2019s also the possibility of a sign-and-trade if the Cavs get below the first apron. Or, James could opt to sign for a minimum contract.<\/p>\n It\u2019s pointless to speculate too much on the finances at this point. There\u2019s numerous scenarios for making this work from a cap perspective. If both sides want James to play in Cleveland, they\u2019ll find a way to make it happen as they did back in 2014.<\/p>\n Even though LeBron is 41 years old, he\u2019s still playing at an exceptionally high level. He recorded a triple-double<\/a> in his last outing in the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>\u2019 win over the Dallas Mavericks<\/a> on Thursday. On the season, James is averaging 22 points, 7.1 assists, and 5.8 rebounds on .502\/.305\/.746 shooting splits in a mostly supporting role alongside Luka Doncic.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll see how this plays out. In the meantime, we can rest assured that there\u2019s going to be plenty more rumors about James returning to Cleveland between now and July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We have one more rumor to add to that list. On Friday, ESPN\u2019s Tim McMahon said on NBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,13608,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-602240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-rumors","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116067537268603991","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602240","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=602240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}