"Deserve" doesn't enter the picture on a league with a strict salary cap and a very, very steep luxury tax penalty for going over.
It's not a matter of right or wrong. Ideally, you would have a MLB-like system, and Lebron would be getting $50+ millions/year, and everybody else would be getting paid what they 'deserve'.
But that's not the current CBA. And so you have to make deals based on reality, not what's 'right or wrong'.
And players past their prime that want to win, have come to the realization that under this reality, they're going to have to take a paycut if they want to have the talent around them to win.
Some other players decided to get paid instead, and that's a fair choice. But under this reality it means very little room to put the pieces around him to win.