It's fair to say LeBron James was caught off guard by Magic Johnson stepping down as president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Speaking on HBO's The Shop, King James was asked to reflect on the day he found out Magic officially declared he was stepping down in what was a rather awkward ending in management with the team.
Johnson didn't consult owner Jeanie Buss about his decision to step down before going public in a media scrum, nor did he tell James.
“My right hand comes to me and says, ‘Magic just stepped down,'” said James on Saturday's episode.
“I’m like, ‘You mean from out of his car? Get the (expletive) out of my face.’ … He’s like, ‘Go check your phone.'”
Blindsided by the decision, James didn't believe the news when he first heard it, and didn't believe the timing was ideal right before one of the team's final regular season games.
“No one had no idea,” James said on his show. “We were like, ‘Damn, like right now?’ It was literally 70 minutes on the clock before (the game). I’m not playing, but my team is still playing, and you kind of decide to do that right here, right now. I feel like there’s a time and place for things, and I believe that you knew that you were going to make that decision, so why would you do it here and why would you do it now?”
Johnson played a crucial role in convincing LeBron just one summer before to leave his hometown club for Los Angeles and went into further detail on how Magic's recruiting him.
Personally, for me, I came here to be a part of the Lakers organization, having a conversation with Magic (last summer) and really kind of breaking it down and saying how we were going to make this ‘Showtime’ again, and I wanted to be part of that process,” James said. “He explained to me Year 1 is going to be tough. … But I was OK with the process. At Year 16, you aren’t really supposed to be worrying about no damn process, especially for me because I’m in championship-mind mode all the time.
“So it was just weird for him to just be like, ‘I’m out of here’ and not even have no like, ‘Hey Bron, kiss my (expletive). I’m out of here.’ I would’ve been OK with that. ‘Hey Bron, it’s Magic. Kiss my (expletive), I’m gone.’ Not even that.”
The Lakers let go head coach Luke Walton at the end of the season with the expectation that they'll bring back former Cavs head coach Tyronne Lue in hopes of recreating some "magic" from when the Cavs won the 2015-16 NBA Championship and appeared in two more Finals.
With James under contract for three more seasons, the Lakers are expected to be a big player this offseason in hopes of polishing up their roster so they can return to the post-season.
Given how Johnson left the organization, the team should probably do as LeBron wishes given how rocky his first season in LaLa land turned out to be.
