LeBron James is on his way to the longest star free agency of the century... which is a record he already owns

Look... we're all thinking it. LeBron James is taking a really, really, really long time to pick a new team. An annoyingly long time, in fact. This isn't just a sportswriter passive-aggressively whining about an NBA player delaying his vacation (but it's not not that either). The commissioner of the NBA himself has said that teams and television networks are calling him about locking in the schedule, but the league cannot do so because LeBron is still a free agent. Problems like this are a rarity in the NBA because of how quickly the offseason tends to move.

The existence of a max contract removes the need for the sort of lengthy, star-level contract negotiations that tend to delay Major League Baseball's free agency. The best players know what they're going to demand, everyone knows who's capable of paying them, and money flies around quickly. The days of free agency tours and even extended pitch meetings have mostly ended. Within a day or two, most of the money on the open market has been spent, and the biggest free agents have usually moved.

But James is a billionaire who is apparently not making a decision based on money. That means teams in the running for his services don't need to hold money for him, and the rest of the market isn't held up by the teams preserving cap space. He can take his sweet time, and he is doing just that. As of this writing, there is no known timetable for a decision. He has said in the past that this free agency could even stretch into August, now just 10 days away.

So, I'll ask the question that's probably on your mind by now: Is this the longest star free agency in NBA history? I'll answer that question from the jump: no. It's cheating, but Michael Jordan's contract with the Chicago Bulls ended in 1998, he retired and was therefore unsigned for three years, and then he returned to the Washington Wizards in 2001. That's a three-year free agency, a mark of Jordan's that James will almost certainly never topple. But still, even without that technicality, LeBron's 2026 free agency doesn't hold the record... yet. In fact, it isn't even the longest LeBron James free agency ever.

Let's set some parameters here. First of all, we're only going to cover free agencies from this century. There are a few reasons for that. First, the max contract was introduced in the 1999 CBA, which makes it a clear line of demarcation in how free agency worked. Second, social media obviously didn't come into prominence until well into the 21st century. Finding reliable reporting on when deals were struck is hard enough in the early 2000s. Any earlier and things become borderline impossible.

Next, we need to establish what a star free agency is. I set two criteria: the player needs to have made the All-Star Team in the same calendar year in which he became a free agent. In 2026, for example, the All-Star free agents were James and Norman Powell, as they were chosen for the 2026 All-Star Team. Second, the free agent has to be unrestricted. Restricted free agency tends to lead to lengthy, artificial standoffs between the two sides. Case-in-point: Jalen Duren is a reigning All-Star, and his free agency is almost certain to last longer than LeBron's. That's not because he has a harder decision in front of him. It's because the Pistons successfully scared away the market by making it clear they would match any offer, so now there's no cap space left for anyone to offer him.

As for how I landed on the dates, I went by the day in which an agreement was either reported or the player announced the decision themselves. Official signings can be delayed for reasons ranging from complicated cap mechanics to the player being on vacation when his agent strikes the deal. This is an admittedly inexact science that involves Googling decades-old news, but there's no easy, alternative methodology. The dates I went off of are linked in the table below as the earliest reporting I could find.

By these parameters, we have had 73 All-Star free agents in the 21st century. Of those 73 All-Star free agents, 16 of them needed at least 10 days to make up their minds (at least based on the earliest available reporting on an agreement, which admittedly gets spottier in the pre-social media era). Below, those 16 free agencies are ordered by length, with LeBron leading the way, but not from this summer:

Longest star free agencies in NBA history

You might not have even remembered that James became a free agent in 2016. His famous free agencies came in 2010, 2014, 2018 and now 2026. Those were the summers in which he changed teams, or in this summer's case, plans to change teams. But remember, James took short-term contracts in his return to Cleveland in order to maximize both his leverage with the Cavaliers and his ability to capitalize on a rising salary cap. There was no doubt whatsoever that James would remain in Cleveland after winning the 2016 championship. Nonetheless, there was no announcement until the middle of August, when his company, Uninterrupted, broke the news.

If you're looking for the longest star free agency involving a player to change teams, it would be Eddie Jones in 2000. He was part of a complex nine-player trade that involved his own sign-and-trade from the Charlotte Hornets to the Miami Heat, though, so he didn't quite function as a traditional free agent. James, as a true free agent who seemingly intends to take a minimum or exception contract with a new team, is primed to have the longest star free agency of the century in which the player winds up signing outright with a new team.

Beyond James, you'll likely notice the clustering of these extended free agencies in certain years and eras. Four of the 16, for example, took place in 2014. That's no surprise, as Wade and Bosh were James' teammates in Miami, and they needed clarity on his decision in order to make their own. More than any other point in his career, LeBron's 2014 free agency held up most league business while he made up his mind. 

Seven of the 16 came in 2004 or earlier. That is just sort of how the league worked in those days. Free agency started to take its current form once James started using it to move in 2010. Before that, it was a much slower process. James took eight days in 2010. Notice that aside from James and Pau Gasol in 2016 and all of the 2014 players, no player from the 2010s reached the 10-day threshold. 

By the 2020s, the timeframe shrunk even more. Anthony Davis and Kawhi Leonard took their time, but did so while re-signing with their original team on practically preordained deals. It's been a decade since a star free agent took more than a week to change teams. The last serious, suspenseful wait we had before James came from Leonard in 2019, when he took six days to join the Clippers.

Only time will tell how much higher James climbs up this list. The August comments from before free agency began suggest he could top the list. His more recent comment that he "won't hold you guys up too much longer" suggests he'll stay where he is. Everyone from league schedule-makers to weary sportswriters is hoping for the latter.