CLEVELAND — The past and present of the Cleveland Cavaliers collided Monday night in another did-that-really-happen moment that usually only seems to involve LeBron James.
On the night the Cavs’ current star, Donovan Mitchell, watched helplessly from the bench as Cleveland inched toward elimination in its Eastern Conference semifinals series with the Boston Celtics, James sat courtside blowing kisses to the fans who roared when he was introduced in the first quarter.
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These are strange days in the NBA. We are entering a troposphere that even James hasn’t reached because it soon will involve his son, Bronny. More on that in a minute.
James, his wife, Savannah, and his agent, Rich Paul, observed from courtside as the Cavs fought valiantly without two of their best players before losing to the Celtics 109-102. The Cavs’ season is in peril as they head back to Boston facing elimination without potentially Mitchell and Jarrett Allen again in Game 5.
Allen’s mysterious rib injury has forced him out of the lineup for two weeks. Mitchell has a strained calf that affected him throughout the fourth quarter of Game 3. I saw Mitchell briefly in the hallway as he was leaving the arena Monday night. He didn’t want to say the knee problem he has fought through since the All-Star break led to the calf strain, but it is the same left leg, and it’s at least fair to wonder if one may have somehow contributed to the other.
Nevertheless, calf strain recovery times are typically measured in weeks, not days.
Giannis Antetokounmpo missed the Milwaukee Bucks’ postseason with a calf strain he suffered late in the regular season. Boston’s Kristaps Porziņģis has missed the last two weeks with a calf strain and isn’t expected to appear in this series.
Mitchell remains hopeful for Wednesday’s elimination game, and the fact he was able to play through it despite the pain in the fourth quarter of Game 3 might be an indication it isn’t as severe as the injuries Antetokounmpo and Porziņģis suffered. But it seems unrealistic to expect Mitchell to recover enough in the next two days to play a postseason game regardless of what’s at stake for the Cavs.
And what’s at stake is, well, everything. Which is how all of this leads back to James.
The only other time since he entered the NBA that James has visited this arena as a spectator at a Cavs game was in March 2014 when the organization was retiring Zydrunas Ilgauskas’ jersey. James was a member of the Miami Heat then, and it wasn’t a coincidence the Cavs selected a night to honor Ilgauskas when the Heat were in Chicago, meaning James was only a short flight away. James gladly accepted the team’s invitation to return, marking a surreal night with him as a spectator in Cleveland.
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Four months later, he returned to play for the Cavaliers.
Everything, everything James does is calculated.
Sure, LeBron and Savannah were in town to visit both mothers over Mother’s Day weekend. That didn’t mean he had to show up courtside at a Cavs game two days later when he knows the type of attention it elicits.
I spoke briefly with James on his way out of the arena Monday night in the game’s closing seconds. He was grinning widely talking about Bronny, who had a very good day Monday at the NBA Draft Combine.
Bronny James knocked down 19 of 25 shots to finish second in the 3-point shooting drill, and Dad was especially pleased with his son’s 40.5-inch vertical leap.
James has a $51 million player option with the Lakers he could always pick up for next season, but the larger point is that he has carefully aligned his free-agency track with his son’s entrance into the NBA. When he was back in town for All-Star weekend in 2022, James told me unequivocally his final season would be spent playing with his son.
“Wherever Bronny is at, that’s where I’ll be,” James told me in 2022. “I would do whatever it takes to play with my son for one year. It’s not about the money at that point.”
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James has seemed to walk those comments back in recent years, but it was the first thing I thought watching him walk through this arena again Monday night.
After all, the Cavs select 20th in next month’s draft. It is their final first-round pick that they control until 2030. The Utah Jazz will control their draft for the next five years — three unprotected picks and two pick swaps — as payment for the Mitchell trade.
What if the Cavs used their first-round pick on Bronny? Imagine the seizures it would create throughout the league.
The Athletic previously reported the Lakers are open to drafting Bronny this summer, as well as signing the senior James to the maximum three-year, $164 million they are allowed to offer.
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The Lakers are willing to do whatever it takes to make James happy long before he appeared Monday night in Cleveland, so I’m not sure how much more leverage James can create at this point or why it’s necessary.
The Lakers currently hold the 17th pick in the first round, three spots ahead of the Cavs. The New Orleans Pelicans and old Cavs general manager David Griffin could pluck the Lakers’ pick this year as final payment for the Anthony Davis trade, but all indications at this point are that New Orleans will let Los Angeles keep its pick and defer the selection to next year, as is its right under the terms of the deal.
Would the Lakers select Bronny at 17? Or are they better off bundling the pick in hopes of landing a star to play alongside LeBron and then selecting Bronny in the second round? Bronny James certainly isn’t a traditional first-round draft prospect, but nothing is ever traditional and normal when it comes to the James family. Anything is possible.
The idea of the Cavs drafting Bronny and then bringing LeBron back for a third run is complex but worth exploring. James on this Cavs team would likely make them favorites in the East again. James has never been embraced in Los Angeles the way Cavs fans cheered for him Monday night.
But the Cavs don’t have the cap space to offer James a max deal. While he did tell me in 2022 that he would do “whatever it takes” if it meant playing with his son because “it’s not about the money at that point,” I somehow can’t picture James returning to Cleveland and Dan Gilbert on a league-minimum deal. Short of James playing for the minimum, or even the midlevel exception, the Cavs would have to execute a trade with the Lakers, and who’s to say the Lakers would even agree to such a plan?
It’s complicated, but then so are the Cavs right now. They have their star to worry about in Mitchell, who has one season of team control left beyond this year. If Mitchell doesn’t sign an extension with Cleveland this summer, the Cavs will have to explore trade options — and one of the teams standing at the front of the line will be the Lakers. It’s possible, given Mitchell’s current condition with his calf, that he has already played his final game in a Cavs jersey.
I wrote before these playoffs began that I thought Mitchell’s best course of action was to sign the extension to stay in Cleveland. I still believe that to be true, particularly given his calf and knee issues. Take the $200 million from the Cavs and run to the bank. Sort out future life plans later.
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All of it — Mitchell’s future, LeBron’s attendance and Bronny’s impressive showing at the combine — collided on one evening in Cleveland, where the Cavs cheered their past while their present limped out of the arena into the warm spring night. The Cavs might be tasked now with the impossible Wednesday — win an elimination game in TD Garden without two of their best weapons.
A summer of uncertainty awaits for both the Cavs and the rest of the NBA.
LeBron James, always so strategic and calculated, chose this night to return in front of these fans.
Why?
(Top photo of LeBron James: David Dermer / Associated Press)