LeBron James reveals his family also had to evacuate home: ‘I’ve been off personally’

LeBron James is the latest Lakers to reveal he had to evacuate his home alongside his family due to the fires in Los Angeles.

The impact the wildfires in Los Angeles have had on the Lakers becomes clearer and clearer with each passing day.

Following Wednesday’s game against the Heat, LeBron James joined Anthony Davis and head coach JJ Redick in revealing that he had to evacuate with his family last week due to the wildfires.

“Been a lot of emotions,” LeBron said. “I’ve been off personally. My family, we’ve been evacuated since Thursday night, so I’ve been in a hotel since pretty much when we got back from Dallas. So, just figuring it out, but staying strong for one another, obviously that’s most important. Our friends that lost their homes, just being there for them. It’s very challenging, especially when you got kids and you lose your home and all their belongings.

“It’s just a lot to even wrap your head around. I’m very happy that my family is safe. My wife and my three kids and my mom, she’s been here, everyone’s safe. But it’s just been off. Just been completely off, but, hopefully, things are contained or continue to be contained and hopefully, at some point, we can start to push forward and move forward and and put it behind us so we can rebuild our city, rebuild this beautiful city and things of that nature.”

On Monday, AD spoke about his situation, which was similar to LeBron’s in needing to evacuate and still being in a hotel with his family. LeBron noted on Wednesday that his house was still standing and spoke of both a desire to get back home and the reality that many around LA don’t have that luxury.

“[I’m] just waiting patiently for when we’ll be granted to possibly go back to [our house] and be at one again under our home,” LeBrons said. “To think of that, to know that families have lost their home where they don’t even have that privilege, it’s just it’s just mind-blowing to me. So we’re grateful, super grateful, but still just like thinking about all families that had to go through all the things we had to go through, the things we had to go through over the last, I guess, week, it seems like so much longer than a week.”

Redick shared his personal experience with the fires, which unfortunately included losing the home he was renting with his family in Palisades. After Monday’s game, Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs gifted their jerseys to Redick’s kids courtside.

On Wednesday, LeBron shared a moment with a fan courtside during and after the game. After seeing a clip of her reaction to him at halftime, LeBron gifted her one of his wristbands and took a photo with her postgame.

Those moments over the last week have shown how impactful the game of basketball can be, especially to a city reeling like Los Angeles has been. Similar to AD earlier in the week, LeBron spoke of the dichotomy he, his teammates and those in the franchise are facing right now.

“I mean it’s definitely our job to know that, yeah we still have a job to do and we have to focus on our job but also still being human beings and understanding that what real life is all about, too,” LeBron said. “But I hope that, by us going out on the floor and us playing the way we played tonight, not the way in San Antonio, but the way we played tonight and, hopefully, in the next few months or whatever it is – years until the city is back up – that we, as a Lakers franchise, and the players that’s going to be playing for the Lakers, give some of hope and pride and excitement and things of that nature.

“Sports has always given people an opportunity to kind of just like temporarily forget about whatever they may be going through. Us being such a big part of the LA community, along with a lot of other sports teams – but we know how important the Lakers is to the community – hopefully we can provide that for a lot of fans.”

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