The moment LeBron James decided to leave the Los Angeles Lakers this offseason didn’t come out of nowhere. According to a detailed report from ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, the real rift started back in the summer of 2021, when the Lakers traded for Russell Westbrook.
McMenamin’s reporting, which dropped in the wake of James’ departure for the 2026-27 season, paints a picture of a relationship that slowly soured over four years. Sources told him there was a disconnect between James and the organization that began during that doomed 2021-22 season and never really healed. The trade was the starting point, not the end.
“There was more of a disconnect between James and the organization, sources said, one that started during the doomed 2021-22 season following the Russell Westbrook trade and never fully recovered,” McMenamin wrote.
Before that deal, the Lakers had other options. They were close to acquiring Buddy Hield from the Sacramento Kings. They were also linked to DeMar DeRozan, who wanted to come home and play for the Lakers but ended up signing with the Chicago Bulls instead. Instead of either of those moves, the front office went big. They traded Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell and a first-round pick to Washington for Westbrook, a former MVP who seemed like a weird fit next to LeBron and Anthony Davis from day one.
It turned out to be exactly that weird. The Lakers went 33-49 in Westbrook’s only full season, missing the playoffs entirely a year after winning the 2020 championship. That’s a brutal drop. Westbrook was eventually traded at the 2023 deadline in a three-team deal that brought D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley to L.A. But the damage was already done.
Why the Westbrook trade mattered more than the results
The Lakers did bounce back enough to reach the Western Conference finals later that season. They made the playoffs two more times after that. But the kind of sustained championship contention everyone expected when LeBron came to L.A. never really returned. The Westbrook trade, in retrospect, felt like a fork in the road the Lakers took the wrong way on.
McMenamin’s reporting suggests James recognized that the Lakers were in a different phase as a franchise. They weren’t building around him the way he wanted. So he chose to prioritize his own basketball happiness, as ESPN’s Shams Charania put it, and find his final NBA home somewhere else.
James leaves behind a complicated legacy in L.A. Eight seasons, one championship in the 2020 bubble, and he became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer while wearing a Lakers uniform. That’s real. But the Lakers have already moved on, reshaping their roster around Luka Doncic and adding Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Quentin Grimes and Collin Sexton this offseason.
The thing is, that move to pivot toward a younger core might have started with the trade they made five years ago. The one that never really worked and maybe cracked something that couldn’t be fixed.
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