Steph Curry and LeBron James faced off in four NBA Finals and finally got to team up this summer in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. James has said before that Curry is one superstar he’d “love” to play with one day, and he got his wish at the Olympics. The duo played tremendously well off each other, creating a lethal two-man game as Team USA won the gold medal with an undefeated run.
If not for James’ agent, Rich Paul, it’s possible the two era-defining superstars could have teamed up in the NBA, too. According to longtime NBA insider Marc Stein , Paul was “adamantly opposed to the idea” of James leaving Los Angeles for the Bay Area when the two teams were engaged in preliminary discussions about James’ availability at the ownership level. From Stein’s Substack : Sources say Paul implored both teams to scrap the concept — despite some owner-to-owner dialogue between the Warriors’ Joe Lacob and the Lakers’ Jeanie Buss and (Draymond) Green’s determination to lobby James to push for relocation to the Bay Area — largely because he wanted to insulate James from potential backlash over switching teams for the fourth time in his career.
Shortly after last year’s trade deadline, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne revealed that the Warriors made an unsuccessful bid to convince the Lakers and James to consider a trade to Golden State. Their reporting included details of Warriors owner Joe Lacob reaching out to Lakers counterpart Jeanie B.