LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and the choice that haunts the Los Angeles Lakers - ESPN

THERE ARE EXACTLY 124courtside seats inside Crypto.com Arena for every Los Angeles Lakers home game. Securing a pair of them for any game is no easy task. For corporations, they are an investment, not a luxury. For celebrities, they are the ultimate status symbol. Nobody goes to as much trouble as it takes to secure them without an agenda.

Which is why so many heads turned and cellphone cameras snapped before Game 6 of the Lakers' first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies. It was April 28, 2023. The Lakers were up three games to two and looking to advance past the first round for the first time since their championship run in the Orlando bubble in 2020. The atmosphere was electric. Eighty-six-year-old Jack Nicholson even came out for a rare public appearance to sit in the courtside seats he has held since the 1970s.

Minutes before tipoff, a man wearing a stylish, black-and-white shirt made his way to two courtside seats across from the Lakers' bench. And it didn't take long for his presence to be noticed. It was Kyrie Irving.

During pregame warmups, Lakers star LeBron James walked over to his former teammate, dapped him up with the same intricate handshake they'd come up with in Cleveland and hugged him.

Irving lives in Los Angeles in the offseason, and he had an open calendar after the Dallas Mavericks failed to make the playoffs. But he was also about to become a free agent, and according to sources close to him, Irving had a strong interest in reuniting with James — the man he'd won an NBA championship with as Cavaliers back in 2016 — either in Los Angeles or Dallas.

Irving was there, sources close to him say, to send that very message.

For nearly a year, the Lakers had extended internal discussions