LeBron James’ career may not be over, but it’s the end of something

The air in Crypto.com Arena is thick with solemnity. There’s an understanding happening, a clarity that has been simmering for an entire season, one that’s only become more apparent as the clock winds to zero, ending the Los Angeles Lakers’ season with a sweep by the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder.

LeBron James is at the end.

James’ 2025-26 season is over. His tenure with the Lakers may have ended as well.

And maybe even his career. 

The Lakers never quite stood a chance against the Thunder, but Game 4 was their most valiant of the series. They fell down double digits twice in the game, a cue to wave the white flag and plan for the summer vacation. Instead, the Lakers persisted. A lead at halftime. A lead entering the fourth quarter. A lead in the waning minutes.

But it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. LeBron and the Lakers were swept out of the playoffs. The fourth sweep of his career. A knock that will become part of the amorphous idea of “legacy.” A season that will be called a failure.

Still, to watch this last stand is to appreciate the two decades that led to this moment. 

Take, for instance, when the 41-year-old James powers former teammate Alex Caruso in the post, bullying him until he gets to the exact spot he wants before draining a fadeaway, and suddenly it’s the 2015 Finals again. We see him in a Cavs jersey trying to bring a championship to Cleveland. His two best sidekicks, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, are injured and out. And James has found his way.

It isn’t pretty. It’s an evolution, which is often unpretty. He’s using force, physicality, a control of his mass and strength that punishes an entire Warriors team. He’d lose the series in six games but lead both teams in every important statistical category.

When his pitch-perfect pass to Deandre Ayton clanks off the big man’s hands and careens out of bounds, it’s 2010 again. Or maybe 2003. Or maybe even 2018. And James is suffering from a supporting cast that can’t help him.

James has played with some of the best supporting cast members in NBA history: Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Irving, Love, Anthony Davis and Luka Doncic. An embarrassment of Hall of Fame riches.

But he’s also been a man on an island, a man who couldn’t will a team of players to miracle wins. Yet, he’s been judged for them all when there’s not a player in NBA history who would have beaten the Spurs in 2007 with that team. Or the Celtics in 2010 with that team. Or the Warriors in 2018 with that team. It’s a legacy of more losses than wins, things that will matter in barbershops and GOAT discussions only if you’re already trying to make an argument against James.

They’ll say the same thing about Monday night’s sweep, and they’ll be silly. Because this isn’t a guy failing. This is Captain Ahab, lording the ship and raging against the very notion of mortality. But the whale is here, and it’s a team full of dudes who were each younger than his 11-year-old daughter Zhuri when LeBron James made his debut in the league 22 years ago.

The Thunder owe so much of their existence to James. He is the defining athlete of the 21st century. He didn’t save the league like Larry Bird or Magic Johnson in the 1980s, or make it international like Michael Jordan and the Dream Team in ’92. But it’s his legacy that became the driving conversation.

Media conglomerates were built on the back of James controversies, debates and slights. He carried the league into the social media and hot take era. It’s his highlights, meme-able moments and sound bites that fed entire networks for two decades.

And in the wake of it all is the future of the league: the same Thunder team that ripped the Lakers’ hearts out with a series of clutch shots and suffocating defense that choked out any hope for a Los Angeles win.

They’ve brought on the end.

Maybe it’s not the end of James’ career, but this is the end of something. Some things. It’s more likely than not that this will be the furthest he ever goes again in a season.

Whether it be due to retirement or team futility, James will most likely be home for Mother’s Day next year. It’s been six years, dating back to the 2020 playoff bubble, since he’s been on a team that has truly contended deep into the playoffs, unless you count the 2023 conference finals team that the Nuggets swept.

That bubble year was also the last year he’s been in the top five in MVP voting. He’s not a defensive stopper anymore, and he’s prone to running out of gas over the course of weeks or even a game.

Yet, he’s still LeBron James. The guy who leads the league in transition points. Who is a freight train at full speed. Who was the best player in a first-round series against a team that was supposed to compete in the West. 

And now he’s getting swept by the Thunder to complete a season he spent most of serving as the third-most important player on his team. His Lakers have been demoralized by a champion that defends and executes at a level that makes James’ team look like it doesn’t belong on the same court.

What’s next? That’s where the intrigue lies. 

This past year has been maybe his most tumultuous in Los Angeles — a city where he’s played more consecutive seasons than anywhere else in his career. There’s clear tension between him and the Lakers, and a real conundrum at the forefront: It’s Doncic’s team now, and it’s time to build around the future. That doesn’t leave much space for a legend to use the upcoming season as a farewell tour, especially when the money going to him could help put pieces around Doncic, the current scoring champion.

Everyone in Crypto.com Arena knows this. The speculation about LeBron’s next steps is all over the place, ranging from informed to something bordering on fan fiction.

Will he and the Lakers figure this all out, allowing him to stay home and finish his career next to his son, Bronny, while he continues to take a back seat to Doncic and Austin Reaves? Will he return to Cleveland and finish his career in his hometown, even though last month he talked about how much he hates going back home? Will he go to the Warriors to play with Stephen Curry and run it back, old man style? Other team names, such as the Houston Rockets and New York Knicks, were tossed around, and none make sense.

In fact, no move for James fits perfectly. Pretty much all of them require him to take a pay cut, something he’s been loath to do in his career.

There’s no perfect poetry to the end of James’ career. No world where he gets a championship run and the money he’s used to as the primary star. There are going to be more nights like Monday’s when we see his limitations, greatness and awe-inspiring singularity.

The possible final shot of James’ career is a miss off the glass that could have sealed the game.

It’ll be another last-second miss. “No clutch gene” and all that. That part is boring. The actual shot to remember is the last one he made a few minutes earlier. That’s when he overpowered Lu Dort, a human tank in his own right, muscled him away and unleashed all his fury on the rim. It’s a play no one his age should be able to make. And yet, he does.

Because that’s what LeBron does. 

Or did. 

And will always do.

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