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LeBron James signs with the Los Angeles Lakers, Twitter explodes

The world's best basketball player is moving to Los Angeles on a four-year, $154 million deal.

Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
Jackson Ryan
2 min read
2018 NBA Finals - Game Two
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There's only one storyline that's dominated the NBA off-season so far: Where will LeBron James be playing basketball in 2018-19? 

Would it be the Philadelphia 76ers, forming a superteam with Aussie LeBron, Ben Simmons? Would he stay put in Cleveland, threatening the Toronto Raptors for the rest of his days? 

Or would he be taking his talents to Venice Beach?

Courtesy of ESPN sports reporter, Adrian Wojnarowski, the news broke late Sunday evening that he would indeed be taking those talents to yet another beach and joining the Los Angeles Lakers.

Shortly after, the move was confirmed by Klutch Sports, LeBron's management agency, run by close friend Rich Paul.

Then: The floodgates opened. Twitter went BANG! and unleashed the full fury of social media reactions: Love, Hate, Fury, Remorse, Sadness, Elation. It's all there -- tweets were pouring in so quickly it was impossible to keep up. ESPN sports business reporter Darren Rovell tweeted that 56,000 tweets were coming, per minute.

A lot of commentary around LeBron's destination also centered around another legit star, San Antonio's Kawhi Leonard. Whether LA can make a LeBron-Kawhi superteam is yet to be decided, but, it seems possible, with another bomb from Wojnarowski about Leonard's preferred team.

Noted Spurs man, Shea Serrano, has some advice for the San Antonio front office. 

But they have bigger fish to fry anyway -- Manu Ginobili's first name is causing a stir?

And over in LA, plenty of LA natives welcomed the star, including current (and potentially former) teammate Kyle Kuzma, Chrissy Teigen, the LA Rams, Kobe Bryant's weighing in, Yasiel Puig's weighing in and a God welcomes a King.

Some forgot that LeBron's home is actually Ohio, but that's okay. It's easy to get caught up in these things dee-oh-double-gee.

While some seemed surprised, there was one man who saw this coming. 

One man knew. One man could see the future. One man had no problems calling LeBron's move, back on June 12. 

Oh... but Elon Musk knew too, back on June 16.

With LeBron departing the Eastern Conference for the first time, many rejoiced -- Boston and Philadelphia should feel pretty good about things. Toronto, too.

With LeBron joining one of the league's most storied franchises, there's a whole new debate to nail down. 

Let the conversation begin.

Update 6:22 p.m.: More reactions added.

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