EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — A summer that LeBron James never could have imagined for himself, and surely never would have asked for, is over, finally.
“You made it sound so bad,” he said.
Well, let’s see…
LeBron hasn’t played basketball since March. So this was the longest summer of his first 16 NBA seasons, his first without playoff basketball since 2005, and first without a Finals since 2010. In an ESPN power ranking of players, for the first time since the network started doing one, he’s no longer No. 1 in the NBA. He’s third.
And also, Magic Johnson walked out on him.
And the Lakers fired Luke Walton.
And they broke off contract negotiations with Tyronn Lue, LeBron’s old coach, who was supposed to come in and fix this mess. But advisers to Rob Pelinka and Jeanie Buss did not want LeBron to have too much power, so Lue was presented with conditions for his hiring he could not accept, and the Lakers ended up…
