Lakers: Should L.A. Retire LeBron James's Jersey Number?
LeBron James was the Finals MVP on a championship Los Angeles Lakers team. That's more than can be said for, say, Elgin Baylor, and his jersey was obviously retired by the Lakers long ago.
But Baylor played all 14 of Hall of Fame seasons with the Lakers and appeared as the best or second-best player on seven Finals clubs. The way this season is going, it's feeling increasingly more possible James will not conclude his career as a Laker, and could seek a trade as soon as his eligible this summer.
Whether or not that actually happens is even a bit immaterial. 12 games into the 2022-23 season, his Lakers are looking like one of the league's worst teams, and he and Anthony Davis seem to have both massively declined from their levels of play during the team's 2019-21 run.
Let's assume the Lakers decide to preserve their future first-round draft picks in 2027 and 2029, and thus more or less keep this current roster as-is through the year. Should they do that, the Lakers could very easily miss the play-in tournament entirely. So James will have made the playoffs in just two of five seasons and gotten out of the first round just once. Is one championship and four forgettable other seasons worth a jersey retirement for the league's winningest franchise?
If this were another player, perhaps not. But it's LeBron James, one of the four or five greatest players in the history of basketball (this writer would rank him fourth, behind Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell). I think his jersey will be hanging in the Crypto.com Arena rafters soon enough.
And to be fair, James himself was pretty excellent when on the floor in the first four of those seasons, though his intermittent availability tempered his impact on wins. He has not been quite at that level this year just yet, but a sore left foot may have blunted his efficacy thus far.
Which LeBron James Lakers jersey number should L.A. retire? James won his title with L.A. wearing No. 23 (Jordan's jersey number), which he wore during his first three seasons here, but switched to No. 6 (Russell's jersey number) at the start of the 2021-22 season. The odds seem stacked against him making the postseason in a No. 6 jersey before at least 2024.
The team could take a page out of its Kobe Bryant book and retire both numbers, but considering how badly the teams of No. 6 have performed to this point, perhaps just No. 23 should get the honor.
