Shaquille O’Neal on Lakers: “If you trade LeBron, you’ll never win again”

The mix of LeBron James being dramatic and the massive Lakers fan base already leads to hyperbole, but Monday afternoon Shaquille O’Neal took it to a whole new level.

Shaq was on CNBC talking crypto and his roughly 6,347 endorsement/franchise deals when the topic turned to the Lakers’ struggles and LeBron. He said there is an expectation of winning with the Lakers and a few other franchises, and it’s hard when those expectations are not met.

Then Shaq threw this out.

“If you trade LeBron, you’ll never win again,” Shaq said. “You have to make a decision. If you put LeBron around the right guys, they are definitely going to win. I think whoever put the team together needs to step up and try and fix it.”

Well, um, that brings us back to LeBron. He, at the very least, advocated hard for Westbrook.

Also, the “never win again” line is over the top — this is the Lakers. They are the biggest franchise brand in the league playing in the second-largest market. They can miss the playoffs for five straight seasons and LeBron will choose to play there anyway. Fans from Sacramento to Charlotte and every small market in between can complain all they want, the Lakers have and will always have a huge advantage in recruiting players and, over their history, they have played that advantage well.

After talking to sources, the reality looks more like this: nobody around the league expects the Lakers to trade LeBron. Plus, he came out and said he wants to “stay with the Lakers as long as I can play” LeBron’s shots across the bow of GM Rob Pelinka and the Lakers’ front office during All-Star weekend are seen as a message to be aggressive in reworking the roster this offseason, a message Pelinka no doubt got from Lakers’ ownership as well.