Getty LeBron James is expected to try to recruit Kevin Durant to sign with the LA Lakers.
Rumors linking Kevin Durant to the Knicks have been in full swing, but the Lakers are also expected to make a major push for KD along with other free agents. While not mentioning Durant by name, LeBron James noted he expects to be as “active as I need to be for us to get better.”
“I’ve never played fantasy basketball,” James told Bleacher Report. “But I will be as active as I need to be for this franchise to get better. That’s why I came here. I came here to win. And obviously, we need to get better, as far as our personnel. We have an opportunity to get better. And there’s a lot of talent out there, and a lot of guys that can help our franchise. So I’ll be as active as I need to be for us to get better and go from there.”
The Lakers are not the only team in Los Angeles that plan on competing for top free agents like Durant. The Clippers are also expected to be active in trying to land a major stud this summer.
“Brooklyn and the Clippers have a decided advantage over the two marquee names, because they’ve done far more in the last few years to position themselves to be sustainable than either New York or the Lakers,” an anonymous general manager noted to Bleacher Report.
Kevin Durant Denied He Has Made a Decision About His Upcoming Free Agency
For months, Durant has been tied to the Knicks, but the Warriors superstar denied that he has made up his mind. Lakers fans could view this as a good thing. Durant elaborated to The Undefeated about his mindset.
If I already made a decision, it would take away from the team, what we’re fighting for. Every play would be overshadowed by it. It is not necessary for me to make a decision right now. It would be bad to do that. It would take the focus off of what is important. I would never want to put my teammates in a messed-up position. I want to forget about it.
But it is still putting everybody in messed-up positions where everybody wants to know all the time, everybody is speculating and everybody is trying to get in my head and what I think about it.
Durant and James made waves when they had a discussion with their mouths covered during a recent Warriors-Lakers game.
“Everybody wants to know what we’re talking about,” Durant told The Athletic. “It wasn’t even that serious. Just laughing and joking and catching up.”
The Athletic’s Frank Isola called James’ public recruitment of Durant “fair game.”
LeBron is a shrewd businessman and since the rules about player-to-player tampering are blurred, his public recruitment of Durant is fair game. Whether it works will be determined in July when Durant, the top free agent on the market, makes a decision that could dramatically alter the NBA landscape.
At this point, anything regarding Durant’s future is speculation, but the Lakers are likely one of the few teams that will continue to be mentioned once Durant narrows down his list of teams to meet with this summer.