Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
I don't believe this is accurate.
Firstly, Lebron has never been the type of guy who signs smaller deals to free up space for a 3rd star. There are few things you can say have been as constant throughout Lebron's career as his desire to maximise his income. If there is any possible way for him to get LA to give him another max, he will get them to give him another max and that's what he will sign. Lebron is not doing a Tim Duncan discount; there has never been any indication in his entire career that he would be willing to do such a thing.
Secondly, you say that they'll transition to the next core group by then. My question is, where is this group supposed to come from? They can't trade for promising young players: they have nobody under contract long term and no picks. They can't draft those young players, they have no picks. They're not getting those guys flocking to them in FA because they have no money and, as Lebron ages over the next few seasons, there's no real reason to go there; players don't flock to play with AD, as we've seen.
You can argue that maybe players will just go there because it's LA, but then you have to ask why nobody was doing that for the last 7 years before Lebron showed up. If players want to go to a destination city to live the high life, they're just going to go to Miami, which at least has some good young prospects and has been consistently good for years.
Thirdly, while we've seen freeing up cap space happen, there are circumstances where that's harder than usual. It's easier to free up cap if you have a few overpaid middle-tier players and you can attach picks to move them, or you can can stretch contracts, or whatever. It's very difficult to do that when you have two separate guys earning over $40m a year: we call this the Westbrook/Harden dilemma.