When the 2025-26 NBA season ends for the Los Angeles Lakers, two questions will follow LeBron James into the offseason.<\/p>\n
First, will he decide to play a 24th season or retire<\/a>? Second, if he does play, will that be with the Lakers or another team? Could he return for a third turn with the Cleveland Cavaliers? Might he finally go to the New York Knicks?<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Another question that probably wouldn\u2019t have been asked but can now be safely answered: If he does play, James will not suit up for the Memphis Grizzlies next season.<\/p>\n Appearing on the \u201cBob Does Sports<\/a>\u201d YouTube show, James said he \u201cmight have pulled an Eli Manning\u201d if the Grizzlies had won the 2003 NBA Draft<\/a> lottery. (The Memphis remarks begin at the 10:55 mark<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The conversation about Memphis began when James was asked if the travel during an NBA season got to him. After disparaging staying at a Hyatt in Milwaukee at 41 years old, he followed up by saying, \u201cYou think I want to do that, being in Memphis on a random-ass Thursday?\u201d<\/p>\n James then revealed that his feelings about the city are shared by several NBA players.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cWe all like, \u2018You guys have to move,\u2019\u201d he continued. \u201cLet\u2019s go over to Nashville. You got Vanderbilt over there. You got the f****ing NASCAR. You got a stadium. Don\u2019t they got a hockey team too?\u201d<\/p>\n Host Robby Berger then said to the camera, \u201cDoesn\u2019t look like LeBron\u2019s going to be on the Grizzlies any time soon.\u201d<\/p>\n James responded, \u201cYeah, they know. Their only chance was in 2003 if they would\u2019ve won the lottery. And I might have pulled an Eli Manning and not shown up.\u201d<\/p>\n The Manning remark is a reference to the 2004 NFL Draft when the quarterback and his agent reportedly told the San Diego Chargers that he wouldn\u2019t play for them even if he was drafted No. 1 overall. The Chargers did select him, but traded him to the New York Giants<\/a> for Philip Rivers.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Serendipitously, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the No. 1 overall pick and the Akron, Ohio, native went to his home area team.<\/p>\n Memphis ended up with the No. 13 selection and drafted Marcus Banks out of UNLV, then traded him to the Boston Celtics. (The Grizzlies actually won the No. 2 pick, but had to trade it to the Detroit Pistons as a condition of a 1997 trade<\/a> that sent Otis Thorpe to Memphis. The Pistons selected Darko Milicic.)<\/p>\n If James and his fellow NBA players get their wish for the Grizzlies to relocate to Nashville, it likely wouldn\u2019t happen until 2029<\/a> when the team\u2019s lease with FedEx Forum expires. James will almost certainly be retired by then. And maybe the Grizzlies will be competitive after a rebuild started by trading Desmond Bane<\/a> and Jaren Jackson Jr.<\/a>, with Ja Morant expected to be next<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the 2025-26 NBA season ends for the Los Angeles Lakers, two questions will follow LeBron James into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,75,193,497,188,6204,294,178,496,185,150,293,177,4070,102,6,7558,191,68074,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-695591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","11":"tag-desmond-bane","12":"tag-detroit-pistons","13":"tag-eli-manning","14":"tag-grizzlies","15":"tag-ja-morant","16":"tag-jaren-jackson-jr","17":"tag-lebron-james","18":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","19":"tag-memphis","20":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","21":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","22":"tag-milwaukee","23":"tag-nba","24":"tag-new-york-giants","25":"tag-new-york-knicks","26":"tag-philip-rivers","27":"tag-the-grizzlies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116339863284027511","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695591","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=695591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}