LeBron? The retiring type? We say no way ... at least not yet

But we've also never really heard any retirement talk from LeBron James before, so the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza explores some potential reasons why he went there after the Lakers' playoff exit

LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers were broomed into the offseason Monday night by the Denver Nuggets.

Swept.

Nuggets in four.

We are most certainly not done talking about the Lakers, though.

Denver may be on its way to the first NBA Finals appearance in franchise history, but Tuesday's lead NBA story pretty much everywhere — to the presumed dismay of Nuggets coach Michael Malone — naturally focused on what my podcast partner Chris Haynes reported soon after Denver completed its 4-0 blanking of LeBron's Lakers in the Western Conference finals:

Me, personally?

No. I don't think James is ready to retire.

I can think of at least three reasons, beyond his exhaustion and frustration in the moment after playing all but five seconds in a desperate attempt to extend the Lakers' season, that James began dropping hints from the post-game interview podium about what the Haynes story fleshed out:

1.  He wants to divert our attention from the fact that he and Anthony Davis could not prevent the Lakers from failing to win a single game against Nikola Jokić and Co. after they eliminated the defending champions from Golden State in Round 2.

2. He wants to exert pressure on the Lakers' front office, by suggesting he might walk away from a two-year contract extension worth nearly $100 million that hasn't even started yet, to pursue an offseason agenda that goes beyond merely re-signing Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura. Like, say, pursuing a sign-and-trade for Dallas free agent-to-be Kyrie Irving ... or some other roster move he covets.

3.  He simply isn’t ready to see his name deleted from the postseason conversation. To cap his 20th NBA season, James scored 31 of his 40 points in the first half to stake the Lakers to a 15-point halftime lead in Game 4 before Jokić and Jamal Murray led the comeback that secured Denver's series-clinching 113-111 win. Which left LeBron eight victories shy of the fifth championship ring he is said to want badly.

No one's doubting that James' Year 20, at age 38, took an immense toll. The Lakers started 2-10 under first-year coach Darvin Ham. Not long after surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer in early February, James sustained a serious foot injury that sidelined him for 13 key games, endangering the Lakers' playoff chances even in the wake of GM Rob Pelinka's successful roster overhaul which featured the trade departure of the polarizing Russell Westbrook. We don’t know yet if the injury will require surgery.

Of course, it was also in February, shortly before passing Abdul-Jabbar, that James announced he’s "not going anywhere" and plans to "be in this league for at least a few more years." I still give credence to those words, too, while the world tries to parse the meaning of all these latest utterances.

James' longstanding and oft-cited plan, furthermore, has been to try to play alongside his eldest son Bronny somewhere in the NBA before he walks away from the game. Bronny James won't be draft-eligible in the NBA until June 2024 after playing out next season at USC. Even after James acknowledged recently that "just because that's my aspiration or my goal doesn't mean it's [Bronny’s],” I struggle to believe that he’s ready to abandon that plan now.

So, no, I can’t see LeBron going out like this.

Yet on the morning after he raised that possibility, with no shortage of skepticism in circulation, I had to connect with Mr. Haynes to record an unscheduled podcast covering this story from all angles. Please give it a listen here:

And please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast, which drops twice weekly.

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The Long Wait

No matter what happens Tuesday night, when Miami tries to complete an Eastern Conference finals sweep of Boston in Game 4 at home, Denver earned itself eight full days without a basketball game before it plays host to Game 1 of the NBA Finals on June 1 by sweeping the Lakers in the Western Conference finals.

Enclosed below is your full Finals schedule — with start times, remember, moved up by a half-hour for the five games scheduled to be played on weekdays.

The NBA used to announce a “move-up date” for the start of the Finals in the event that the two conference finals series ended quickly but in recent years has preferred to stick with one targeted NBA Finals start date for planning purposes.

My first major Finals curiosity, for the record, continues to be Miami’s scheduling. If the Heat can finish off the Celtics in four, in other words, how soon before June 1 will Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra have them practicing in Denver to get used to the famed Rocky Mountain altitude?

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Numbers Game

🏀 4

The Nuggets, at last, have matched the other three active former ABA franchises by reaching the NBA Finals, joining San Antonio (which broke through in 1999), Indiana (2000) and New Jersey-turned-Brooklyn (2002). Those four teams were absorbed into the NBA as part of its merger with the ABA heading into the 1976-77 season.

🏀 5

Denver’s 12-3 surge through the Western Conference (series wins over the Timberwolves, Suns and Lakers) has left only five current NBA franchises without an NBA Finals appearance. The fivesome, as covered in this tweet from Tomer Azarly, is led by the LA Clippers (whose wait has stretched to 53 years when including their eight seasons in Buffalo) and Minnesota (34 seasons). Charlotte (33), Memphis (28 seasons including six in Vancouver) and New Orleans (21) round out the list.

🏀 0-150

The Lakers’ inability to rally out of a 3-0 deficit against Denver dropped NBA teams to 0-150 lifetime when they lose the first three games of a best-of-seven playoff series.

🏀 3

Only three of those 150 teams have forced a Game 7: Portland against Dallas in the first round of the 2003 playoffs, Denver against Utah in the Western Conference semifinals in 1994 and New York against Rochester in the 1951 NBA Finals.

🏀 8-11

The in-crisis Celtics have won only eight of their last 19 playoff games at home.

🏀 58

Reminder: There are only 58 picks in the June 22 draft rather than the usual 60 because Philadelphia and Chicago each forfeited a second-round pick. The Hornets and Pacers hold five picks each. Nine teams (Grizzlies, Kings, Nets, Thunder, Wizards, Magic, Jazz, Trail Blazers and Spurs) hold three picks each.

🏀 1977-78

Only other team in NBA history besides this season’s Lakers, according to fellow Substacker Justin Kubatko, lost 10 of its 12 first games of the season and went on to reach the conference finals. Seattle actually went all the way to the NBA Finals in 1977-78 with a regular-season mark of 47-35 after its 2-10 start, losing to Washington in the championship round that season and then winning it all in 1979 in a rematch against the then-Bullets.

🏀 28.7

Another Kubatko special: He assembled a list of numerical tributes to the retiring Carmelo Anthony here that includes the reminder that Anthony won the league’s scoring title in 2012-13 by averaging 28.7 points per game. Anthony and my beloved Bernard King (1984-85) are the only Knicks in league history to lead the NBA in scoring average. We’ll have more on Melo soon.