Agreed. As someone who was born and raised in Houston but has spent more of my life in California and has homes and businesses in the Bay, OC, and LA I would NEVER move back to Texas if I had a choice. Where in OC are you? I can only see Luka moving on only if he gets fatter or the new ownership massively miscalculated the difference between baseball and basketball.
LOL yeah, you kind of screwed up in your bs story telling here guy. You make it seem like you live in OC, and then say "living there", if you lived there you'd say living here. All of what you described seems like you do not live in SoCal at all. Even if you did, OC is not LA. I have properties in Brentwood, DTLA, and OC. "Most people are just glad to be rich and enjoying the beaches to care" lmao that is 100% false, no one w multiple beach front properties speaks like this. Also, if you speak to wealthy people in LA/OC they barely go to our own beaches. A lot are not happy and complaining, they have homes in the area, but have one foot out the door establishing residencies in other states. I know many people who have lived here their whole life and have not step foot in that water in years unless they surf. The water in HB is dirty, the sand has tar on it, there are literal pieces of wood floating in the water still in Malibu. You have zero clue about DTLA, players on the Clippers, Lakers, and other teams once had apartments downtown. It was not just full of homeless, there are multi million dollar luxury high rises in DTLA. In the early 2010s players who were married or had girlfriends often had apartments downtown so they could literally point to girls in the stands and have them come back. The Ritz Carlton Residences are right next to the arena, this was one of the places, and where visiting teams stay even today. The CEO of NetJets did an interview recently and mentioned that private jet traffic has fallen off a cliff for LA/OC, it has picked up in AZ and FL, he also mentioned that people are staying in these locations for longer periods instead of going back to CA. I personally know people who have moved their planes from SNA to SJD and have been spending the entire summers down there. No one with money is going in that dirty OC water lmao, thats how I know your story is bs. There are plenty of people I know personally who have sold off properties here, and plenty of people we've all heard of who have sold everything (Drake, Elon Musk, have sold or listed every single LA property) and moved to Texas. These are people with unlimited budgets and chose to live elsewhere, it happens. The growth CA saw year over year declined post pandemic. There were 170+ years of net population growth, and then there were 3 years of net population decline after that. We've been flat for 5 years now.
Uh, Dwight Howard? Chris Paul? James Harden? Russell Westbrook? They either played in LA or from the LA area.
What point are you trying to make? Dwight went back to LA, Chris Paul realized he could not win a ring with the Clippers and the rest all went back to LA. Having said that who knows maybe Luka signs in Miami or New York but with the Lakers new owners I highly doubt it. They have deep pockets and connections.
My entire distant family has all but parted ways with Southern California decades ago. Most living in Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, Nevada and even Florida. The Hollywood Dream was lost nearly 30 years ago.
