Preorders for new Lakers LeBron James jerseys were robust enough on Sunday night to give retailer Fanatics one of its top 10 sales days in terms of NBA gear sold, a spokesman for the company told ESPN.
Jerseys, with the placeholder of No. 00, went up on the site of the world's largest seller of licensed sports jerseys at around 8:45 p.m. ET on Sunday night, roughly 40 minutes after the news broke.
James will wear No. 23, the same number he wore in both of his Cleveland stops, league sources have told ESPN.
In the first three hours of sales, there was a 600 percent spike compared to how his new Cavaliers jersey sold on the site on the day when he returned to Cleveland from Miami in July 2014.
The top markets for sales of LeBron's Lakers jersey were Los Angeles, New York, Oakland/San Francisco and Cleveland.
Clevelanders didn't seem to mind buying LeBron jerseys leading up to his free agency and some have become fans for life after he fulfilled his promise to bring a title to Cleveland. He did exactly that in 2016.
If fans bought a Cavaliers LeBron jersey in the last 90 days, Fanatics has a Jersey Assurance program that enables consumers to exchange, free of charge, a James Cavaliers jersey for either a James Lakers jersey or a new jersey of a player on the Cavaliers.
Lakers LeBron Jerseys won't ship until the deal is signed, which could happen as early as noon on Friday.