He will be the first player in history to play the 23rd season in the League
June 30, 2025 18:16
At 40 LeBron James He has no desire to stop playing basketball. Star is Los Angeles Lakers He will exercise his $ 52.6 million player option for 2025-26, confirming that he will become the first player in the history of the NBA to play the 23rd season in the League.
The confirmation of a source close to the dossier at the Associated Press, after the rumors of Espn and The Athletic. Waiting for the official, the news has already gone around the world even if it was in the air since the champion of Akron, Ohio, had been training for a few weeks.
James will turn 41 in December and has been selected as All-Nba in 21 of its 22 seasons in the League. In his career he won practically everything and more And he is already in the Olympus of the older ones always, but his desire to be the protagonist on the field has not yet gone out even after becoming the first in the history of the NBA to play with his son (Bronny, ed) in the same team.
James, who recently returned to training on the pitch after taking several weeks to recover from knee ligament distortion in the last Lakers match in the playoffs last seasontold the AP at the beginning of this month to expect to be ready for the training camp. “I have a lot of time to take care of my injury, the knee, the rest of the body and make sure you are as close to 100% as possible when the training camp will begin at the end of September,” James said in that interview. If even after that interview there had been doubts about James’ return to the field, the oldest player in the NBA, for at least another season, have now gone.
He had until Sunday afternoon to decide on the option, which brings his career earnings to about 580 million dollars. The next season will be his first complete year with Luka Doncic as a teammate. The Slovenian champion was sold to the Lakers from Dallas in February, but the team, which had entered the playoffs as a third series head in a western conference already full of great players, was still defeated in the first round by Minnesota.
The NBA market
The news of the renewal of Lebron James, however, is not the only one of a NBA market already entered the heart. James Harden will terminate the last year of his contract with the Los Angeles Clippers and sign a new agreement worth 81.5 million dollars to stay with the team for the next two seasons.
Harden can still withdraw from the new agreement next summer. Julius Randle and Minnesota Timberwolves are instead finalizing a new agreement that could keep it with the club until the 2027-28 season, as reported by Espn and The Athletic.
The last year of the agreement will be at the discretion of Randle and, if exercised, could bring the total value of the contract to 100 million dollars.
Instead Bobby Portis refused his player option for the next season and instead accepted a three -year contract of 44 million dollars to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Finally, the Golden State Warriors exercised the team options for the Quinten Post Center and the GUI Santos Ala and advanced a qualifying offer of 7.9 million dollars to the other ALA Jonathan Kuminga.
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