LeBron James to Philly: After a dozen years and many tears, here we go

LeBron James is officially a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. It does not feel real. Frankly, I still haven't fully processed the Jaylen Brown trade.

When the Sixers were swept by the Knicks in early May, that felt something like the end. Philadelphia poured its heart and soul into a 3-1 comeback over the Celtics — one of the most emotional victories of my basketball-watching life — only to hit a wall, yet again, in the second round.

There was no way, realistically, that Joel Embiid and Paul George would ever be healthy enough for a championship run. The dream was dead.

Now, less than three months later, the Sixers have a new front office, helmed by former Cavs GM Mike Gansey. He swapped George for Brown and lured the greatest player of all time to Philadelphia on a two-year minimum contract, no doubt aided by staunch recruitment efforts from Embiid, Brown and the city's most ardent beam of light, Tyrese Maxey.

How did we get here?

LeBron said it himself: the goal is to compete. And in Philadelphia, he has the best chance of any rumored destination (with the possible exception of Minnesota) to reach the mountaintop one last time.

The Sixers — when healthy, a common caveat around these parts — boast the most talented, electric starting five in the NBA. Embiid, James, Brown and Maxey are All-Star talents, maybe All-NBA talents. VJ Edgecombe was the No. 3 overall pick a year ago and he dropped 34 points on Boston in a playoff game. He is significantly better than your standard fifth option.

The Gansey-Maxey effect

The recruitment process happened behind closed doors, but the bulk of the credit probably belongs to Gansey and Maxey.

Gansey made the Brown trade, which put Philadelphia on the map to begin with. He's also a Northwest Ohio guy, having competed against LeBron in high school. Their tenures in Cleveland overlapped. There was clearly a strong connection there.

Then there's Maxey — a Klutch Sports client and quite possibly the face of the agency once LeBron retires. Maxey is not only extremely talented, but he operates with an infectious joy, a persistent and undeterred optimism, which almost feels out of place on a team like the Sixers which have spent so much of the last decade torturing its fans.

Maxey has worked out with LeBron in offseasons past and cultivated that relationship. When Rich Paul mapped out the infamous whiteboard on his Game Over show, which featured the potential lineups for every team on LeBron's radar, only one player had a star next to his name: Tyrese Maxey.

The Sixers do not get to this point without Maxey. He changed the culture in the locker room, raised the spirits around the organization and gave Philadelphia a longer, more stable window than Embiid ever could. Maxey should never pay for another meal in Philadelphia, if that wasn't already the case.

Sam Hinkie and Daryl Morey — and Joel Embiid — laid the groundwork

Sam Hinkie made Joel Embiid the No. 3 overall pick all the way back in 2014. It was a two-year wait just to see Embiid on the court, but the results were more spectacular than any of us could've imagined. Embiid became a league MVP. Some would argue he became the NBA's greatest player for an all-too-fleeting moment in time.

When the basketball historians write this chapter in Sixers history, it will start with Embiid. The many highs and lows. The constant roster turnover. The individual and collective greatness so often undercut by paper maché knees and the basketball gods' cruelty.

We don't yet know how this chapter will end, but as it starts with Embiid, it also starts with Hinkie. He took the initial plunge on Embiid — and flooded the Sixers front office with assets, all in anticipation of one day building a juggernaut roster around him.

Hinkie was never able to see his vision through, of course. Maybe that was for the best. We have no way of knowing. After the darkness of the Bryan Colangelo years, Philadelphia was once again bestowed with hope in the form of Daryl Morey, Hinkie's former mentor. At the time, Morey was sort of viewed as the LeBron James of GMs: a singular basketball mind who revolutionized how NBA front offices operate.

It was Morey who led the Sixers down their current path — this star-studded path of financial reckoning, prioritizing elite top-end talent over depth. Morey always believed that if a championship was even remotely possible, it was his responsibility to push in every chip. He lived and later died by his desire to chase stars, even if it meant sacrificing on the margins and ruffling a few feathers along the way.

The Morey era was imperfect and often frustrating. Embiid has cycled through so many co-stars at this point. Colangelo made the Jimmy Butler trade, then imploded the roster and signed Al Horford. Morey made his most fateful decision when he selected Maxey 21st overall in the 2020 NBA Draft. He also flipped Al Horford to OKC, when set in motion the chain of events that led to acquiring James Harden. When Morey fell out of love with Harden, he intentionally maneuvered to clear the necessary cap space to sign George a year later.

The Sixers do not get LeBron without Morey's impeccable drafting, which landed Maxey and eventually Edgecombe. They also do not get LeBron if he doesn't leave the Sixers with Paul George and a 2028 Clippers first-round pick, which he acquired from shipping Harden out. The three-stars model of team-building has fallen out of fashion in recent years as the new CBA restricts high-spending teams, but that model allowed Philadelphia to swap George's questionable contract for Brown's questionable contract — which happens to fall on a much friendlier timeline. It paired Brown with two all-world talents in Embiid and Maxey, while Morey's well-timed tank job in George's first season led to Edgecombe falling into their lap. Another star on a dirt-cheap rookie contract.

The concentrated star power of Brown, Maxey and Embiid is undoubtedly what caught LeBron's eye. Gansey came in to finish the job, but this has long been the vision: to draft stars and create the asset wealth and winning equity necessary to attract more stars on top of them. To turn Philadelphia from a franchise lost in the woods to a championship contender that top players want to be a part of.

What happens next?

The Sixers instantly become the most dangerous offensive team in the NBA.

We can throw the "when healthy" phrase around all we want, but Philadelphia has four bonafide All-Stars and Edgecombe, who could join that stratosphere sooner than later. The glory of this setup is that it allows the Sixers to hedge against injuries and keep multiple live-dribble threats on the floor at all times.

Embiid is still going to miss time. The running theme for a decade in Philadelphia is that the team craters whenever Embiid is on the bench. Last season, though, the narrative flipped slightly. Maxey alone couldn't win many games, but when Edgecombe and George shared the floor with him, Philadelphia was at least baseline competent in the non-Embiid minutes.

Now, Philadelphia has Brown, a far more durable star than George — and one still in the middle of his prime. Brown led the Jayson Tatum-less Celtics to 56 wins last season. The whole sales pitch with him is that Brown can shoulder a primary scoring burden and put a team on his back.

Maxey flourished in new and exciting ways last year, but he will benefit from more time off the ball, where his range as a catch-and-shoot threat amplifies his electrifying first step and breakneck speed. Maxey attacking closeouts is one of the most beautiful sights in basketball. His body control and touch while moving at hyperspeed defies physics.

Embiid is still the Sixers' best player, somehow. Not always their most available, but certainly pound-for-pound their most impactful when he takes the floor. He still commands a double team on every post touch. He has gotten increasingly comfortable running the offense from the elbow, locating cutters and attacking open seams in the defense.

LeBron is, really, the perfect missing piece. And while there were strong basketball fits available in Minnesota and Golden State, it's hard to imagine a more perfect marriage between what the team needs and where LeBron is, personally, at this stage of his career.

James is 41 years old. He is a freak of nature. He led the Lakers to a first-round victory over Houston with Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves both hurt, lest we forget. But James is no longer built to be the primary engine for a championship roster. What he can do is set the table.

For all the scoring talent spread between Embiid, Brown and Maxey, the Sixers have always struggled to find great passers. Guys who can read and react on the fly and help put all their bucket-getters in the right spot.

That is what James is here to do. He's going to take over a game every now and then, sure. But why this works is because James has the IQ and instincts to take a back seat and play the role of facilitator. A table-setter. He provides the connective tissue between Brown and Maxey, between Embiid and their perimeter scorers, that simply did not exist beforehand. The Sixers were going to compete on the basis of talent alone, but James is the cherry on top of an unwieldy basketball sundae. He ties it all together.

There will be a learning curve, but it's hard to imagine a team this talented not figuring out how to play winning basketball together. Moreover, if Embiid needs to miss time, the Sixers are equipped with the necessary manpower to reorient and thrive without him. If LeBron misses time, Embiid, Brown and Maxey can all lead the charge on a given night.

Folks will point to the Sixers' depth as a concern, and understandably so, but it's not like Philadelphia has nobody in the second unit. Dean Wade is among the most versatile and impactful wing defenders in the NBA. Anfernee Simons is among the most prolific bench scorers in the NBA, and the sort of high-volume sharpshooter who should thrive as defenses focus their attention on Philadelphia's myriad stars. Labaron Philon is a rookie, but he's an extremely polished three-level scorer who played excellent defense as a freshman at Alabama, back before his offensive workload exploded. He'll be asked to fill gaps this season, rather than take over the show. He has shown that he can be extremely valuable in a secondary capacity.

The main concern would be center depth, as Adem Bona and Ariel Hukporti both foul a lot and struggle to make offensive decisions that don't involve dunking a spoon-fed lob at the rim. That said, Dominick Barlow was quite effective in backup five minutes in that Knicks series. It was one of the few positives from that series, in fact. Barlow's ability to defend out in space, hammer the glass and not dribble the ball off his foot under pressure could mean Philly already has its backup five alternative hiding in plain sight.

Are the Sixers NBA championship favorites?

It's officially championship or bust in Philadelphia ... again. And major credit to LeBron to joining a team whose fan base is extremely unforgiving. Philly fans hold the Sixers to an incredibly high standard, and thus have spent most of the last decade pulling their collective hair out. If LeBron arrives in Philadelphia and does not live up to expectations, he will hear about it on a nightly basis. So he is applying pressure to himself, too.

The Sixers probably aren't championship favorites in the East. This team will still need to answer concerns about durability and, really, defense. James has fallen off a cliff defensively in recent years and Embiid, though still quite impactful, can't wall off the paint like he used to. Edgecombe can handle the hard assignments on the perimeter, while Maxey and Brown are fine on-ball, too. Individual matchups are less the concern, but how does Philadelphia defend as a unit? Maxey, Brown and especially late-period LeBron all have a tendency to fall asleep away from the ball.

Even with those concerns, however, the Sixers are certainly in the mix. More so than they've been in a hot minute. The depth of the starting five alone should allow Philadelphia to manage minutes and hopefully reach the playoffs in one piece. If that happens, every outcome is on the table. Oklahoma City and San Antonio still feel like the teams to beat, but New York just beat San Antonio and Oklahoma City was a Tyrese Haliburton injury away from meeting its demise in the 2024 Finals. Anything can happen in a seven-game series.

The Knicks are the reigning champs, who just booted Philly in the second round. I'd probably still lean New York if asked to bet on which team wins the East, but the modern NBA has taught us that going back-to-back — even in the conference finals — is a tall task. We can't really know what to expect from the Pacers. Toronto is awesome on paper, but the Kawhi Leonard experience both giveth and taketh, if history tells us anything. The Celtics just invited significant injury concerns with the George trade. The Heat have Giannis and Bam Adebayo, but very little functional depth beyond them. Cleveland and Detroit basically played in the Pretenders Bowl a couple months ago.

The field is wide open. Nothing is guaranteed at this stage, as LeBron would probably tell you first hand. And if Sixers fans know anything, it's that something will invariably go wrong. Even so, it's hard not to be excited about what the next year (or years) has in store. The Process has reached its grand finale.

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