Fred Roggin: LeBron 'wore a Laker uniform, but he wasn't a Laker'

[ASFN Admin]

LeBron James has let the Los Angeles Lakers know he will not be staying with them in free agency, and he did so in a somewhat convenient way. He informed them of that decision on Tuesday morning, hours before NBA teams were officially allowed to start talking to free agents on other teams.

However, the timing of his notification won't change how Lakers fans feel about him, especially those who didn't love him to begin with.

Ever since he joined the Lakers in 2018, there has been a feeling that he was more of a mercenary than a true Laker. Fred Roggin, a longtime television sports anchor in the Los Angeles area, said on AM 570 radio that he never saw the future Hall of Famer as a Laker in a true sense.

"I said it and I'll say it now: He wore a Laker uniform, but he wasn't a Laker," Roggin said. "I always felt that way. I think with LeBron, it's about LeBron."

Roggin then outlined why he feels James decided to say goodbye to the Purple and Gold.

"I think it's money, quite frankly. That's what I think it came down to, and maybe that means you're 1A. Maybe that's what you're saying: at 1A, you don't get paid what you used to get paid. But I think it simply came down to money."

At this time, there is no indication of what the Lakers' conversations with James consisted of, how much money they offered him or whether they even made an offer to him to begin with. They had the ability to offer him a lot more money than the Golden State Warriors, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Miami Heat, the three teams that are currently thought to have any real chance of signing him.

When James came to Los Angeles, the franchise was at a historic low point and had missed the playoffs for five seasons in a row. While it didn't reach the postseason again in his first season with it, it won the NBA championship in 2020 after it traded for superstar big man Anthony Davis in the summer of 2019.

Since then, the journey has been a rocky and disappointing one, as it has gotten past the first round of the playoffs only twice and won any games past the first round in only one postseason. It also didn't qualify for the play-in tournament in the 2021-22 campaign after trading away several rotation players for the ill-fitting Russell Westbrook, a trade that James was reportedly a driving force behind.

Regardless, James will still go down as a singular figure in Lakers lore, even if plenty of fans are glad to see him gone. He averaged 25.9 points, 7.7 rebounds and 7.9 assists during the regular season and 25.6 points, 9.1 rebounds and 7.6 assists a game in the playoffs during his time with the team. It will now move forward into the future with the 27-year-old Luka Doncic and the 28-year-old Austin Reaves as its main anchors.

This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Fred Roggin: LeBron 'wore a Laker uniform, but he wasn't a Laker'

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