NBA Rumors: 3 Teams Top Suitors for LeBron James

With LeBron James currently set to play out the final year of his contract with the LA Lakers and become a free agent after the season, who are the teams most likely to make a big push to land him?

According to Ashish Mathur of Hoops Wire, an NBA Executive has named the Top 3 suitors, "no doubt," for LeBron next summer.

Cleveland, Dallas and Golden State, those are the three teams I’m looking at. All three would have loved to trade for him this offseason, but he never requested a trade and he makes way too much money. Once he’s on the open market, those three will court him. I have no doubt in my mind.

Each team, in their own way, makes total sense to be big pursuers of LeBron on the open market.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, of course, are James' hometown team, and the team he took to the promised land for their first-ever NBA title back in 2016. He was drafted first overall by the Cavs in 2003 (just another one of those NBA lottery "coincidences"), and spent the first seven years of his career there, returning for another 4 seasons later, eventually taking them to five NBA Finals in total.

The Dallas Mavericks sport two of LeBron's former title-winning teammates: Kyrie Irving was his running mate in Cleveland in 2016 for their championship together. Anthony Davis was James' sidekick when they won a title together with the Lakers in 2020.

There have been rumors of LeBron and Steph Curry wanting to team up again, this time in the NBA, ever since last year's Gold Medal run in the Olympics. The Golden State Warriors are trying to get one more title in their legendary run of the last decade, and uniting James with Curry and Jimmy Butler, even if not until next season, might get it done.

James turns 41 this season, and is looking for his 5th NBA title, as are the Warriors as a team in this 10-year+ run.

He's making over $52 million in the final year of his contract with the Lakers, and there haven't been any definitive statements either way about whether he'd want to play on into his age-42 season in 2026-27.

This latest report jibes with a rumor that emanated last month from a different source, which named the same three clubs and a fourth team that was also on the list.