Reports once again indicated over the weekend that the Golden State Warriors are very interested in acquiring LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers.
There are several reasons why it might be challenging for the Warriors to finalize a deal, but Sam Quinn of CBS Sports recently outlined a few potential paths for it to happen.
While he noted that it might be unlikely for the Lakers to trade him to the Warriors, one possible avenue is for Golden State to trade Jimmy Butler to Los Angeles.
Could the Warriors go after LeBron James?
“The Warriors have two feasible paths to matching salaries for James. The first would be a straight-up swap involving Butler. However, such an arrangement would be untenable for the Lakers at the moment.
“Butler makes around $1.5 million more than James, but the Lakers are hard-capped at the first apron and have only around $1.1 million in room beneath it. Therefore, such a trade would be illegal for the time being. The Lakers could include other players, but the bigger a deal gets, the more complicated it becomes,” he wrote.
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If all the Warriors had to do was move on from Butler in a deal for James, it feels safe to say that they’d do that. However, it's also possible that the Warriors don't want to move on from a player of Butler's caliber due to James' age.
Despite James being much older in his career, there's still a strong argument to be made that he's a top-10 player in the NBA.
Butler is very good in the postseason and has proven that over the past five-plus years, but to say that he's the same as James would be unfair for a couple of different reasons.