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LeBron James put up one of the best games of his season on Tuesday night, scoring 31 points to go along with 10 assists and nine rebounds in a 141-116 win over the Atlanta Hawks, but after the game James had to do a bit of damage control in the Los Angeles Lakers locker room.
That’s because Rich Paul, James’ longtime agent and friend, made headlines this week when he threw out trade ideas for Austin Reaves, suggesting the Lakers trade him to Memphis for Jaren Jackson Jr. Paul, who once wielded considerable power over the Lakers’ front office dealings, throwing out fake trades involving one of James’ teammates is notable, and James made sure to distance himself from any connection to Paul’s podcast takes.
“I think you all know by now, Rich is his own man and what Rich says is not a direct reflection of me and how I feel,” James said via ESPN. “And I hope people know that. I hope people know that and if they’re not sensible to know that, then I don’t know what to tell them.”
Rich Paul dreaming up fake Lakers trades is not helping their increasingly gloomy reality
Jack Maloney
James repeatedly noted that Paul is his “own man” and that they don’t talk about his podcast. As for his relationship with Reaves, James wasn’t worried about him taking anything Paul says as coming from James and cited how close the two are.
“AR knows how I feel about him,” James said. “All you got to do is look at us on the bench. Me and AR talk every single day. So, AR knows how I feel about him and I hope AR — or his camp — don’t look at me and think this is words from me are coming through Rich. Rich has his perspective of what he sees, I have my perspective. I’m a grown man, he’s a grown man and I think people should realize that grown men can say whatever the f— they want to say and it shouldn’t reflect somebody else is saying it.”
Unfortunately for James and Paul, no matter how large Klutch Sports (Paul’s agency) grows or how much Paul expands his presence as a public figure, the two are always going to be closely connected in the minds of fans. As long as James is playing, Paul will be “LeBron’s guy” to most. When he speaks publicly on matters involving James’ team, it’s never going to get viewed as just being Paul’s opinion.
James has often bristled publicly at the notion that he wields significant control over his team’s roster moves, but during his second stint in Cleveland and early in Los Angeles he did have considerable influence. But that no longer seems to be the case with the Lakers after the Luka Dončić trade, and Paul also holds far less power in the Lakers facility with just three clients left on the team.
Even if the power dynamics in L.A. are very different now, public perception is hard to change. Paul may want to enter the media space and become a bigger voice separate from his role as an agent — and specifically as James’ agent — but that’s just not the way things work.
For one, he’s too prominent a figure in the sport to just fire off takes without backlash, even from within his industry. ESPN reported Paul and Reaves’ agent had a five-minute conversation about the entire situation on the court prior to Tuesday’s game. And secondly, he’ll always be viewed as James’ right-hand man, and both Paul and James can’t be all that frustrated when fans try connecting dots between them.