If this is it for LeBron James as a Laker, he can walk away with pride.
After signing in 2018, he played eight wildly successful seasons and became the all-time leading scorer, passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 2023. The 41-year-old won an NBA championship in six playoff runs and reached the conference finals twice, all without missing a single playoff game. Individually, he took home a number of accolades, including eight All-Star nods, seven All-NBA appearances and even a 2019-20 assist title by averaging a career-high 10.2 assists per game.
For most NBA players, an eight-year heater like that would be the stuff of dreams. But after the Game 4 loss against Oklahoma City on Monday night, James’ future is uncertain. He is set to be an unrestricted free agent and his days in LakerLand could be in the rearview mirror. LeBron told reporters following the loss: “I don’t know what the future holds for me.”
Even in his age-41 season, James rated as one of the best players in the league, averaging a team-high 23.2 points, 7.3 assists and 6.7 rebounds this postseason for the short-handed Lakers. With Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves (also a free agent) struggling to stay healthy, the need for James’ versatility, leadership and production remains high. He could re-sign with the Lakers or pick up elsewhere with the Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers or other title-aspiring teams needing a veteran impact.
But here’s the crazy thing that really puts LeBron’s Lakers tenure in perspective:
If you isolate James’ stint with the Lakers and look at just his age-34 to age-41 seasons, he would almost certainly be a Hall of Famer based on those eight seasons alone.
And we can prove it.
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Probability
Think about the hardware that James earned as a Laker. In those eight seasons in purple and gold, he earned more All-NBA appearances than the entire Hall of Fame careers of Jason Kidd, Carmelo Anthony and Clyde Drexler. He won more playoff games than Hall of Famers Mitch Richmond, Bernard King and Yao Ming if you look at just James’ Lakers tenure.
This isn’t just an exercise in cherry-picking stats. We can look at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame voting history for something more comprehensive. The proprietors of the indispensable Basketball Reference studied the numbers and found that when it comes to Hall-worthy player careers, there are a series of key statistics and accolades that are statistically significant. That is, they are predictive barometers of Springfield immortality based on those who are in the Hall and those who are not.
When it comes to NBA careers, Basketball Reference determined there are five significant factors (in no order):
All-Star Game selections
NBA top 10 NBA leaderboard appearances in the following categories: Points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, minutes played
NBA championships
NBA peak win shares
Height (believe it or not, research shows, the shorteryou are, the better chances you have)
Win shares, by the way, is an advanced metric that estimates the number of wins that a player contributes to his team based on their box score statistics. The other stuff is pretty self-explanatory. In the end, it answers the question: If this player retired today, what is the probability he would be elected to the Hall of Fame?
Another thing to keep in mind, this only considers whether a player is Hall of Fame worthy based purely on a player’s NBA résumé. European stalwarts like Dino Radja and Šarūnas Marčiulionis would not have been deemed Hall-caliber based on their abbreviated NBA careers. But LeBron in L.A.? We can pull that up.
Leaderboard appearances? With the Lakers, he was top-10 in points in 2019-20 (8th), and assists in 2019-20 (1st), 2023-24 (6th) and 2024-25 (7th). Title? Check. All-Star appearances? He’s had eight of them. The highest win shares total of his Lakers tenure came in the championship season in which he registered an impressive 9.8 figure.
When we type in James’ résumé and apply the model, we can calculate the Hall of Fame probability based on his production in those eight seasons. So, what was his Hall of Fame probability as a Laker according to Basketball Reference’s handy HOF probability calculator? Would he be a HOF in purple and gold only?
Without further ado …
Yup, Hall of Famer. It’s 86.5%.
A near lock.
We can say with pretty good certainty that James would be a Hall of Famer if we just looked at his Lakers run. That’s a crazy notion on the surface. Then we peel back the layers and realize that, since he turned 33, he has as many All-NBA appearances as Tracy McGrady, Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson did in their entire careers. And they never won a title.
Another way to illustrate James’ dominance is to compare his Lakers résumé on paper to other full Hall of Fame careers. Take Mitch Richmond, for instance. The Hall of Fame scorer enjoyed a fine 14-year career in the league, achieving six All-Star appearances and regularly appearing among the scoring leaders. James earned more All-Star (and All-NBA) appearances in just his Lakers stint and had a much bigger hand in the Lakers’ championship than Richmond’s 2002 ring with the team. James’ Lakers career also looks favorably compared to Joe Dumars, Jo Jo White and Earl Monroe.
And that’s just a handful of notable comps. This is where it gets even crazier.
LeBron’s not one, not two, not three, but four Hall of Fame careers
If we can establish that James had a Hall of Fame worthy career as a Laker, it means something even bigger. It means he has stacked four separate Hall of Fame careers on top of each other, demarcated by the three offseasons in which he switched teams.
During the 2023-24 season, when I first looked at this possibility, James’ tenure with the Lakers didn’t quite clear the bar. At the time, he had reached “only” five All-Star teams and hadn’t yet finished among the league leaders in assists in 2023-24 and 2024-25. But with the three extra All-Star notches on his belt and those extra leaderboard appearances, Laker LeBron would reach Springfield based on his résumé.
And believe it or not, both his first Cavs stint (with no titles, but just about every other accomplishment) and his second Cavs stint (with a title) were HOF-worthy, as well as his Miami stint in which he raised the Larry O’Brien trophy twice and dialed up his advanced metrics to historic levels. So that leaves us with — count ‘em — four Hall of Fame careers.
When James signed a four-year deal with the team in 2018, no one would have blamed him for hanging it up after that deal. (Well, maybe some people; it’s LeBron, after all.) He had already played 15 seasons in the league, which was as many as Michael Jordan played and more than Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Larry Bird.
And then he played eight seasons after that. Complete with enough glory to earn a Hall of Fame spot alone. His fourth such golden run of his career.
We can’t ask for much more.
Well, there’s one thing: How about a fifth Hall of Fame career?
