We awake on Monday morning and LeBron James still has not announced where he will be playing basketball next season. Here in Houston, his decision is not of direct consequence, because the Rockets are well down the odds board on the list of places James could play next season, his 24th in the National Basketball Association.
It’s amazing that, at 41 years old and with a game that has seen some (although not drastic) degradation, James can still hold the league, and a few cities in particular, hostage. From a macro perspective, the league can’t form its schedule for next season until James signs with a team. Even in his 40s, he is still an attraction. From a micro perspective, the cities in the running for James’ services — Cleveland, Miami and Golden State are the front runners — are waiting, and waiting, and can’t make other moves until they know whether or not they’ve secured LeBron.
From that standpoint, perhaps we’re lucky in Houston. We don’t have any big free agency decisions keeping us up at nights. We can move along, and start baking our hot takes for Texans training camp next week, and Rockets training camp in September. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a period where we sat in a “LeBron style” holding pattern like those other cities are right now.
Racking my brain, these are the closes instances in recent Houston sports history where we sat waiting on pins and needles for SOMETHING to happen, one for each sport:
**Justin Verlander’s free agency decision after the 2022 championship**
We’ve actually been pretty fortunate, in a way, when it comes to Astros’ free agency though the years. Because it feels like there is a zero percent chance that Jim Crane is going to pay list price for players on long, LONG term deals, we kind of expect players to leave then free agency rolls around. The one time that I know I felt different was after the second World Series title in 2022, when Justin Verlander hit free agency after winning his third Cy Young Award.
Verlander has always been a Crane favorite, as evidenced by the Astros trading for him to come back here in July 2023, so I thought he might pony up the years and money to keep him. Alas, the Mets gave Verlander the $43 million per year he was seeking. Still, as mentioned earlier, Verlander wound up back here anyway.
**The entire Deshaun Watson saga**
There will never be anything like the Deshaun Watson soap opera of 2021 ever again. From his trade request in January 2021 to the lawsuits flying two months later to the ultimate trade that sent him to the Browns, it was a wild ride. The most bizarre part of the whole thing, easily, was training camp in 2021, when everyone knew he wasn’t going to play a snap for the Texans, but he had to show up for training camp anyway. The part of the saga that most closely resembled anything LeBron-like was when Watson was choosing his next destination. The transaction was a trade, not free agency, but because Watson had a “no trade” clause, he had to approve where the Texans traded him to.
Ultimately, the Browns’ willingness to tear up Watson’s old contract, and fully guarantee a new five year, $230 million contract got the job done. The good news ultimately, for the Texans, was twofold — Watson ended up not being good at football anymore, and the Texans used the picks in the trade to draft, among several others, Will Anderson, Jr.
**Chris Bosh’s free agency decision in 2014**
This took place just as Daryl Morey’s roster construction was taking deep roots. The GM had acquired James Harden in a trade in October 2012 as their first real big swing, and the previous summer in 2013, the Rockets pulled off a mild upset by signing Dwight Howard away from the Los Angeles Lakers. Now, with LeBron James leaving Miami to return to Cleveland, the hope was that the Rockets could cherry pick forward Chris Bosh out of Miami, given that the Heat’s days as a real contender likely ended with James’ departure.
It seemed like the Rockets were the heavy favorite, but Bosh ultimately chose the comfort of the surroundings in Miami over a new challenge in Houston. Ironically, the Rockets still made it to the Western Conference Finals in 2015 and again in 2018, even after the great plan of Summer 2014 fell apart.