While LeBron James recently exercised his $52.6 million player option to stay with the Lakers, the 40-year-old phenom has expressed that he “values a realistic chance of winning it all,” whether he’s a Laker or not. And that brings us to the possibility of King James playing elsewhere during the 2025-26 season in what is expected to be one of his last seasons in the NBA –– if not his last.
Let’s take a look at the “LeBron James next team” market on DraftKings Sportsbook and break down which teams are leading in terms of odds.
This market on DraftKings pertains to which team James will play his first minute with in the 2025-26 regular season. So, if he starts the season with the Lakers and gets traded during the season, the Lakers would still be the winning team in this market. With a somewhat competitive roster that includes his son Bronny, Los Angeles is a -1000 favorite to keep James. However, if he does leave, the two teams with the best odds to acquire James are the Mavericks and the Cavaliers.
The Mavericks have been an unpredictable team over the past year, trading Luka Dončić to the Lakers in one of the most shocking moves in sports history. They then got extremely lucky by winning the lottery so they could draft generational talent Cooper Flagg. In addition to the relationship between the Lakers and Mavericks, there is a chance that James would want to play with his former teammate Kyrie Irving, as well as Flagg.
James is also +900 to head back to Cleveland, which finished with the best record in the East last season before crashing out in the second round of the playoffs. It would be a storybook ending to his Hall of Fame career to go back to his hometown and win one more title with the Cavaliers. Cleveland is poised to be one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference once again, especially with Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton both set to miss large swaths of next season.
Outside those two teams, the Warriors, Bucks and Knicks are the three teams with the best odds to land James. It would be another great storyline to see James and Steph Curry pair up to win another title before their legendary careers come to an end. The Bucks and Knicks are two other Eastern Conference teams where James would have a clearer path to a title, given the power vacuum that Tatum’s and Haliburton’s injuries left in the conference. If Milwaukee or New York were to land James, he would immediate bolster their chances of winning the East.
