Los Angeles Lakers: Should they consider trading LeBron James

During the Los Angeles Lakers 120-107 loss to the Boston Celtics on March 9, Jeff Van Gundy suggested that the Lakers should at least consider blowing up their team and doing the unthinkable. He’s not the only one who feels this way.

Most Los Angeles Lakers fans would agree that Jeff Van Gundy is a pretty accomplished man in the basketball world.

The son of a college basketball coach, Jeff was a star point guard in high school in his native upstate New York, won All-American honors at Nazareth College, then became the longtime head coach of the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets, getting the Knicks to the NBA Finals as an eight seed in 1999. He always seems like a genuinely great guy, even though he routinely makes outlandish suggestions when commentating a game on ABC or ESPN.

Well, on Saturday he made one that sounds like total lunacy. He said that the Lakers should “explore trading LeBron for getting as much as they can.”

When broadcast partners Mike Breen and Mark Jackson, the latter of whom is also a former player and NBA coach, admonished him for making such a statement, Van Gundy backed it up by saying “you’ve gotta put everything on the table.”

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The former Knicks coach’s reasoning was, “You’ve got to get on the right timeline. I’m going to say — if I could trade him for the Clippers into cap space, which would give me a better chance to get Durant or Kawhi Leonard, would I not do that?”

To be fair, I think LeBron James, more than anyone else in the Lakers organization, is to blame for what was a promising season turning into a slow-motion plane crash. It may not be fair to blame him for the groin injury that resulted in him missing 18 games, but right when he returned, the Anthony Davis trade fiasco began.

I don’t know exactly what, if anything, LeBron did to personally orchestrate Davis demanding a trade, but the fact that he switched agents last summer to Klutch, which is the agency that represents LeBron, made the self-proclaimed king look culpable.

It seems like the rest of this Lakers team, especially the young players, quit on LeBron, or vice versa, as evidenced by that viral photo of LeBron taking a seat on the bench several seats away from his nearest teammate, him leaving the floor with seconds remaining in a recent loss to Milwaukee by himself, or the lack of emotion and happiness displayed by his teammates when he surpassed Michael Jordan on the career scoring list.

But trading him would be wrong for more than one reason.

First, it would be cowardly. The Lakers are not exactly a cowardly organization. When Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson both demanded trades at various times in their careers, they didn’t give in and all were rewarded shortly afterward with another NBA world championship.

When you’re going after a huge and worthwhile goal, and things are looking bad at the moment, you don’t cut and run. You take a good, close look at what happened, both good and bad, and start plotting your next moves while keeping a positive attitude.

Also, trading LeBron would make the Lakers front office, which is already being blamed by many for this disaster of a season, even worse. It would seem to make it even less likely for someone like Kevin Durant or Kawhi Leonard to want to sign with the purple and gold, as they may be afraid that they would be jettisoned as well at the first sign of trouble.

This crazy idea of trading LeBron James may be gaining some momentum among NBA analysts and commentators.

A few days ago, Jason Whitlock (I know, I know) said on “Speak For Yourself” that LeBron should ask to be traded at the end of the season.

Also, a few days ago, Peter Vecsey, a longtime NBA columnist based in the New York City area, said on “WEEI Late Night” that the Lakers should consider trading their 34-year-old franchise player, and that he “would not be shocked if it happened.”

Here’s all I’ll say about this. If the Lakers fail to make a significant step forward next season, which may mean at least reaching the Western Conference Finals, I could see Lebron’s people making some noise about him possibly leaving as a free agent in 2021 when he can opt out of his contract, as 2021-22 (the final season of his contract) is a player option year.

After all, in the 2008-09 season, the media started to talk about him possibly leaving Cleveland in 2010. In 2012 they started to talk about how he may want to go back to Cleveland in 2014. Early in the 2017 NBA Finals, the media reported that he was seriously considered leaving Cleveland again after the following season. All three times, exactly what they reported was exactly what came to pass.

LeBron is one of the all-time greats, but unlike Michael Jordan, Kobe, Magic or Larry Bird, he doesn’t seem to rise to meet challenges in times of adversity on a consistent basis, to the point where it’s part of his personality.

This time, he’ll have no choice but to give himself a checkup from the neck up and start showing better leadership, because there’s no real chance in hell Magic Johnson will even consider trading him, and LeBron himself has said he’s not even close to retiring.