If you are waiting for LeBron James to make his free agency decision, you might want to get comfortable.
The basketball universe is waiting for James to decide where he will play the final year(s) of his NBA career after leaving the Los Angeles Lakers at the end of the 2025-2026 season.
There are several potential suitors including former homes like the Cleveland Cavaliers and Miami Heat. There’s also the possibility he could link up with stars in Golden State or even Philadelphia or Minnesota.
But on the latest edition of his Game Over podcast with Max Kellerman, James’ agent Rich Paul said that only LeBron James knows when that decision will come and that any reports or information being circulated in the media is pure guesswork.
“Also false, these people don’t know anything, man,” – Rich Paul on reports that LeBron’s decision is coming in the next 48 hours.
Pauls reveals that he has not told teams to hold cap space or make moves for LeBron. pic.twitter.com/xHObLGsaFh
— ESPN Cleveland (@ESPNCleveland) July 21, 2026
“I’ll say it again, none of these people know anything. Nobody knows nothing. And I say that respectfully because we haven’t made it to where anybody knows anything,” Paul said. “I think it’s important for people to understand, we’re not making this about attention and a spectacle. It’s not about a decision or anything like that. He has a choice to make. He has a business choice to make. We’re not going to sit here and decide or allow someone else to decide when he makes that decision or that choice. It’s a business choice that he’s making. And I think as an athlete, why is it that an athlete has to rush his choice.”
LeBron James, and to an extent Rich Paul, have certainly been accused of playing out this free agency decision to create as much attention as possible, most notably being criticized by ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins. Even NBA commissioner Adam Silver has politely suggested that he’d like LeBron to hurry up and make his decision to begin to put together the NBA’s national television schedule.
But some of the idea that James is creating a spectacle goes back to his infamous original decision that he announced in an ESPN primetime special. Every other move he’s made in his career has been much more low key. And while we here very little from James himself, it’s the media that is continuing to keep the story in the news cycle through whatever tea leaves or leanings they can find.
Additionally, Rich Paul dismissed any timeline of when LeBron James would reveal his next destination. He specifically discounted a report that James would make his decision within the next 48 hours.
“I don’t know when his next choice is going to be made. It could be 48 seconds, it could be 48 minutes. I don’t know. Again, you can’t make somebody know something they don’t know,” Paul stated.
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