Is Lebron James underpaid?

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. LeBron James now stuck with the Lakers for two more years. Is it hopeless? To address both of those editorial comments I just made about LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, we bring in my friend, our NBA expert, Brendan Whitted at H.U. Cosell on Twitter.

All right, you can handle both of them without me saying anything else. Is he stuck with the Lakers for two more years? And is it hopeless? I don't think that he's stuck. I mean, I think he wants to be there. You know, maybe this is maybe a little bit telling off also about what his son's plans are. You know, there's been a little bit made more recently about the fact that his son, who's a rising, I guess, a rising senior.

Yes. And a top 50 consensus player in the nation, why he hasn't gotten more offers, why there haven't been more visits. And there's been at least some talk about the fact that he may forego college completely and go to, you know, G. Lee Ignite and kind of wait a year there.

And then see if the number changes. Right now, you have to be 19 to go in and turn the NBA draft. Right. Maybe if if that changes, the board of governors have talked about it. Silver has talked about it. And so maybe they change that and maybe he moves there. So I was a little surprised to see he was he was willing to sign up for at least another year. Remember, he'll be he'll be playing this year. He was already on the contract for this year.

And then it's a one in one is what they call it. So he has the one year that he's under contract and there'll be one plus one as a player option. So that's he still is going to have some some some autonomy about his the ending of his career in which he's always talked about wanting to play with his son, LeBron James Jr. Actually known as Bronny. So that was maybe a little bit telling like, hey, maybe we get Ronnie in college for a year.

But I don't think they're done. Look, I think I've said on here before and maybe not to you, but to some other friends, hey, the person that's happiest about all the the arrows and stuff coming at Russell Westbrook is Anthony Davis. Yeah, he was not good.

Like, you know, he obviously had his injury stuff, but even when he played, he didn't play well. It's been a long time since we saw a bubble level Anthony Davis. And so I think as bad as Russ has been at times, he's been inefficient. If Anthony Davis can get back up to being a top 10 top five sort of player in the league, they can make up for Russell Westbrook's short inefficiencies. There's also some conversations about trades that are still continuing to happen in terms of Miles Turner.

And maybe there's a little bit more change that can come for them. I think all the Kyrie early stuff, it just wasn't a work they don't have the assets for. Well, maybe they can do something else to add some shooting and add some some defensive help to them that that might make them a little bit better in the next two years. All right, let me before we get back to Anthony Davis and the Lakers. So my joke last night when I saw the news that LeBron had agreed to this contract was did LeBron join live golf? And here's why I say that because ninety seven point one million dollars is guaranteed if he is traded and he can be traded because there is no no trade clause in the contract.

There's a 15% kicker in the deal. If he does get moved. I don't think LeBron James is getting traded. But because of all the guaranteed money and in my opinion, this roster is not equipped to compete at the top of the league.

To me, it just sounds like live golf. I mean, he's just going to be on a tour around the NBA. Going to make a ton of money, which is LeBron James underpaid at ninety seven point over the next two years?

The top five guys in this league are generally underpaid because of what they bring for your organization. Because keep in mind, this is a business, right? Like it's very easy to kind of get lost in the in the entertainment value.

We all love it. That's that's why we all follow so closely. But if you're a franchise owner, ultimately, what you're trying to do is make money.

And this is a guy that all the eyes are going to be on you. You're getting all the nationally televised games. Usually you get some playoff games.

Has it for two years in the for L.A. But you're you're getting the sort of coverage and media circus that you want surrounding your franchise. The last thing you want to be all due respect is the Charlotte Hornets, where you're just not important. You're just not an important franchise. And so, hey, if even if you're if you're not a, you know, a playoff team, a top tier contending team, having LeBron on your on your squad makes you.

Hey, they're going to talk about your first take in July. Right. Like that's that's the kind of that's the kind of buzz that you can get around around the league, even if you aren't good. So he's definitely underpaid. Like the cap has hurts those guys more than hurts anybody else. You know, if you're a middling player or a bottom tier player, a guy hanging on, you know, getting a veteran minimum and stuff like that. Those can boost your numbers.

If you're at the top, top, top percentage, it can hurt you. Another important factor about about LeBron's contract. If the if the media numbers change, which which which may happen in depending on CBA and what they do with BRI, stuff like that. When some of these media deals get get get renegotiated, that number can jump up a little bit. I think it's like two hundred and ten million. Right. Like that number can even get good. He's still underpaid at one hundred and ten million dollars.

Adam Gold in studio with my friend Coach Pete DeRuda with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement. Coach, how does longevity risk figure into our retirement and income plan?

This is the best of times and the worst of times, Adam. The longevity risk means we're going to live too long. But to me, every day I live is not too long. Right.

Absolutely. So we want our money to outlive us. And unfortunately, many people have seen you out there listening, maybe one of them. Your money is not designed to outlive you. You might outlive your money. And that's not what we want to have happen, because when we get to that day after you run out of money, it's not going to be a fun time. So let's design a plan that guarantees you'll never run out of money. We call it the GPI plan, Growth Protection Lifetime Income, for the next 10 people. This is a golden ticket, Adam.

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Would you like financial independence into your retirement? And beyond it, 800-661-7383. That golden ticket is a $1,000 value.

Or you could text ADAM to 21000 for Coach Pete DeRuta. This is the way it is really across sports in general. And we have seen the middle class in all of sports. It's happening in golf right now, actually. Everything is being catered towards the top. And we're trying to prop up, in some ways, the bottom of the sports. And some of these veteran guys who are still good, they get squeezed out.

Nobody's going to, like, what did P.J. Tucker sign for? Like, $11 million a year for three years? That's a pretty good wage, right?

And he should be able to squeak by on that. There's a lot of backpacks at the back of the schools right there. Shout out to them, for him and Moten, for doing that for Southeast Raleigh kids. I love it every time I see it. I've covered it a couple times. Gone up to you and donated some stuff.

It's really dope. I was at the park when they put Moten's statue. They unveiled the bust.

I was there for that. It was incredibly inspiring to see the impact that a guy like Lavelle Moten, and we know that he has had help. And I know Mike Tomlin just made a big donation to Lavelle Moten, his Moten Cares, or Lavelle Cares Foundation.

So yes, what they have done in their communities has been absolutely tremendous. Real quick, to Anthony Davis, and then to Christmas Day and the NBA. Davis' work ethic has been challenged over the years.

What I don't get, and why I'm supposed to suddenly believe that it's changed, is that Davis has been a teammate of Lebron's now for four years, right? Four years? Three years? I don't know how many years. Three years?

I think it's three. Three years, okay. Yeah, because Lebron's been there four years.

Yeah, he got there the next year. So at what point did Anthony Davis not look at the guy who essentially works out all the time and is never out of shape? At what point did Anthony Davis not look at that and say, this is what I have to do if I am going to be great? If it's not in you, it's not in you. So I don't, why should I believe that it's going to change with Anthony Davis?

I'm here to believe that it's going to be the same. I mean, it's interesting that we saw the best of him in the bubble, right? Where there was nothing else to do but hoop. You know what I mean? There was nothing else to do. You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't go hang out or anything like that. Not in any sort of real way. I mean, Disney World's cool, but let's be real.

You can only ride Space Mountain so many times, right? So if you wanted to see the best of him, if you wanted to remove all those other distractions and really focus in, what would he look like? That's what he would look like. A guy shooting 35% from three and is a beast on defense and is hard hitting on the boards. Yeah, that's, look, he hasn't been healthy. You know, and I don't know how much you can attribute that to the way that he kind of takes care of his body.

I, you know, those are some of the things I would really love to know. And those are things you can only know if you're like really, really close to these people about like, hey, are you getting injured because you just are one of these people that just can't stay healthy? Because that's happened sometimes. You know, Brandon Roy was a great basketball player, just had some degenerative knee issues and just couldn't stay healthy.

Or are you a person that is just not taking it that seriously? Like there's a very now infamous video that came out during the offseason and where they're asking him, you know, kind of what's going on? He's like, yeah, I haven't touched the basketball in six months. Hey, hey, bro.

I mean, if for no other reason than just the optics, you might, you might want to, you might want to dead that. Like you're not that guy. Right. Like if you're Giannis or something like that, you get away with that. It's like, OK, yeah, you need the time off.

You've had a lot of time off and you're still not going to go work on your craft. It's tough because you were supposed to be the next guy. Right. You were supposed to be the guy that takes over. LeBron's not supposed to be the best person on this team anymore.

Like, that's the problem. It was supposed he got he went to a place where you or or recruited the talent that, hey, I am no longer going to be the number one guy. Let me in the way that way did when LeBron got to Miami. Hey, I'm still going to be good. But you need to be the guy in order for us to be this contender.

That hasn't happened. That mantle hasn't been able to hasn't been able to hand it off to him. And so it's a it's certainly disappointing when you hear stuff like that from Davis and does, you know, kind of the right smiles.

Like, don't you want to don't you want to work on that? Like you have the opportunity to be this X, Y and Z Hall of Fame top whatever player, legendary player. And I think that despite his many accolades and despite the success that he has had, I think a lot of people would maybe look at what the talent that he has and say, you know what? It's been a bit of a disappointing career.

That's Brendan Witted, League Pass Lair at H.U. Cosell on Twitter. All right, we'll get to Christmas Day and all those other things. And the season is going to come up pretty soon.

Training camp starts in about a month and a half. We'll get to that down the road. But I appreciate your time, sir.

You have a good one. Go Bison. Absolutely, man. We got two. We got two on the Deacon Jones watch list before football season starts. We might be we might be all right.

I'm just saying we might be all right this year. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you very much.

Yes, sir. That's Brendan Witted. June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6, 1997, with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina.

It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the twenty fifth anniversary of the move presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Canes twenty fifth anniversary wherever you get your podcast.

See Adam Goldshaw and Adam Gold, Dennis Cox on the ones and twos. We're going to Minneapolis today as we continue our tour of NFL cities. So my question to you, Dennis, is why wasn't this the last bump song? I'm just bringing the heaters. I understand. But this is like this is the one that everybody stands up and sways. And you put your we don't do cigarette lighters anymore. We just hold you put your your flashlight on your phone. Yeah.

And you wave your your flashlight. Okay. Back and forth. It's like this.

This is the concert ender. Okay. I mean, we could we could bump with it again later.

It's an eight minute and forty second song. A legitimate. Sure, we can.

Yeah, we can incorporate a legitimate encore. A couple of quick things. Deshaun Watson settled with the NFL and in the settlement, I actually had said earlier it was a five million dollar fine. Apparently the fine is seven million dollars. Oh, okay. Which, you know, he's getting two hundred and thirty million guaranteed.

Oh, yeah. I just actually just saw the release from the NFL. So it does say seven. It is a seven million dollar fine. All the NFL is taking that seven million dollars and putting it towards programs designed for women who are victims. Yeah. Yeah. It says here first eleven games of the regular season and find five million for violations of the conduct policy. So I'm guessing based off it. I know the Browns are also going to create a fund as well. Part of that seven.

Also, there is. His salary for those eleven games is also forfeited, which isn't much because his first year salary was just a million dollars. That was another thing that the NFL was mad at was that his contract was entirely constructed to avoid paying. They knew he was going to be suspended, but his contract was constructed in such a way to avoid a financial penalty for missing games. But here's what's interesting about the the end game here, because Watson has already spoken to the media today after the ruling came down from the league, after the settlement was announced. And remember, he accepted the settlement. Remember, he apologized before the Browns first preseason game last week, and he still claims that he is innocent. I've always been able to to stand on my innocence and always said I never assaulted or disrespected anyone. But at the same point, I have to continue to push forward with my life and career. So you're not really admitting that you did anything wrong.

Yeah. Here's the problem with this part of the one of the components of this settlement is that Watson will agree to counseling. Anybody that has ever gone through counseling before. If you will not accept that you did something wrong or that something is wrong or that you have a problem. There's no point to the counseling.

At the very least, you just made the counseling more difficult. So first game back will be week 13 at Houston. You can't make that up. All right. Now the Carolina Panthers have this heated quarterback battle. It is the incumbent, Sam Darnold, the challenger, Baker Mayfield. I'll leave you time to laugh.

We all do. Thank you. We have known for quite some time that. It would have to be something monumental that Baker Mayfield would either be hurt or just be so bad that they can't start him. So anything close at all. Baker Mayfield is going to be the starting quarterback. It's unofficially official, according to Jeff Howe of the Athletic, who is a national NFL writer. It won't be announced until after the Panthers game with the Patriots tomorrow night. But Baker Mayfield will be the starting quarterback when the Panthers host the Browns on opening weekend.

Yeah, it's just a big yawn. Baker for his face. Right, exactly. Baker for for his part is not trying to rush anything. To be honest with you, I haven't been worried about when the decision is going to be made or or any of that timeline wise. Just try to put my head down and handle it one day at a time. And that's been the mindset for both Sam and I is just how can we be playing the best ball by the end of camp and just handle it correctly?

Because the locker rooms and the organizations go as the QB room goes. And as long as we're leading correctly and we're, you know, supporting each other, good things are going to happen. So we're not worried about when that's going to happen.

Just trying to get better each day. So tomorrow, I'm sorry. Yeah, tomorrow night in New England in Foxborough. We will have Baker Mayfield play. We will have Sam Darnold play. My guess is that Baker will get the first reps. Although if Matt Ruhle wants to pretend that no decision has been made, then he could certainly let Sam Darnold roll out there with the first couple of series and then bring Baker Mayfield in.

Or do you want Sam Darnold or Baker Mayfield out when the inevitable fights happen? Because these two teams just like to mix it up. It's a tussle.

Matt Ruhle on yesterday's dust up. I didn't really see the hit, but I did see him standing over the player. And that's not how we want to practice, right? So things happen in football. There are some good clean hits, but we don't stand over somebody and taunt them.

It can affect their livelihood. So we sent him off. Yeah, I have no idea really what happened and I don't care. Yeah, apparently a Panthers player, I'm not entirely sure who it was, played a big hit on a Patriots player and that person may have been expressing some symptoms in terms of head injury possibly and was down on the ground.

Oh, that's not good. We don't want anybody hurt. And there was taunting and that's what kind of set things off. Yeah, look, this is just football. This is what happens in football. Did you see the video circulating with the two peewee football players where they run around this long like raised padded obstacle and then they come together in a collision? No. You didn't see it?

I tweeted it out. Okay. I mean, it's a violent hit. I mean, these kids couldn't have been more than six years old. Violent hit. And it's, that's just part of football.

Apparently, it's not my mind, my eyes. You know, young kids shouldn't be doing that and adults. A shouldn't be instructing them to do it and then adults when something like that happens and one kid was, I mean, crushed.

Adults shouldn't be like, oh, you'll be okay. Like, nah, man. Yeah, you don't know that.

Like I would arrested that guy. The issue for the Panthers is that we've already known. We've already known that Baker was going to be the guy.

So whenever you announce it, you announce it. But this was always going to be Baker Mayfield's job to lose, not job to win. He didn't have to do much. As I said in the interview I did with ESPN about a month and a half ago, just said, if he can't beat out Sam Darnold, then Baker Mayfield needs to find a new line of work. Because it's not that Sam's, I'm not even going to say Sam is bad. Sam just doesn't do enough to impact the game. Baker will do that.

It's not all good, but Baker will impact the game. This is the Adam Gold Show. Off of the crossbar, and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. June 19th, 2006. But it all started May 6th, 1997, with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move. Presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now. Find Canes' 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.