LeBron James Is a Sixer and I Still Don't Believe It

Beckett tries to comprehend WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED.

HOLY S**T, THE SIXERS ACTUALLY SIGNED LEBRON JAMES.

I’m still in a state of shock and trying to wrap my head around the fact that the greatest player of the modern era is choosing to join the Sixers of his own free will. The Sixers. The Philadelphia 76ers. A team that has turned into more of a meme than anything and whose greatest accomplishment since Allen Iverson is a first-round playoff series win over the Celtics before being promptly swept in the second round. This is the team LeBron James is looking to ring-chase with?

For a player who is so actively aware of his legacy and public image to join this team and risk his final NBA snapshot becoming the equivalent of Michael Jordan in a Wizards jersey is mind-boggling to me. Like Jaylen Brown, I don’t think this all will fully register until I see him walk out in a Sixers jersey for the first time.

But now that he’s here… it’s impossible (well almost impossible, c’mon Spike and AU) not to be incredibly excited. A starting lineup of Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Jaylen Brown, LeBron, and Joel Embiid is immediately the most talented in the entire NBA on paper (even if some others may still surpass them with cohesion, à la the reigning champion New York Knicks). It also moves Dean Wade from somehow being a critical starter on this team to a player who can focus on contributing off the bench, leaving us with solid depth between Wade, Anfernee Simons, Labaron Philon, and Dominick Barlow. Nick Nurse will have his work cut out for him fitting together this many high-usage stars, but LeBron adds so much that the Sixers have been missing out on.

He brings elite skill to two of the main concerns the Sixers had remaining: rebounding (86th percentile DRB% last year) and playmaking (higher AST% than anyone on the Sixers last year). He brings another dominant transition threat to run alongside Maxey, Brown, and Edgecombe and help create an identity when Joel is off the floor — Maxey, Brown, and LeBron were three of the top four players last season in transition possessions per game. He brings even more free-throw generation — god I cannot wait for how mad everyone is going to be at the number of FT attempts Maxey, Brown, LeBron, and Joel will generate together. And most importantly, he knows how to win in the playoffs and can help to push the Sixers over the second-round line they’ve been toeing for the past two decades. (For those keeping track, LeBron has been to 12 conference finals and won 10 in comparison to the Sixers going to zero conference finals and winning zero over the same time period.)

The Enemy Is Now My Small Forward

There are going to be annoying aspects of this for sure. Every press conference for Brown and LeBron will be an opportunity for incriminating quotes. The fit is not perfect and will take some work for everyone to mesh. The starting lineup falls apart without the big guy, so we realistically need a better backup big (I still do not trust Adem Bona or Ariel Hukporti to start when Joel is out, which is going to inevitably happen). And the league-wide media will have the entirety of its focus on the Sixers — a prospect that terrifies me given the inevitable weird, Sixer-style obstacles that I’m sure will pop up.

But at this point, I don’t care. We just signed LeBron fucking James for a minimum contract. In the course of one offseason, Mike Gansey has flipped the Sixers from a team with no optionality into a team that has jumped into the top five in championship odds and has the entirety of the NBA world abuzz. If you told me at the start of the offseason that we would be able to effectively trade Paul George, two first-round picks, and two-second round picks for Jaylen Brown and LeBron James, I would have called you crazy. Now that we’re here — and before the Sixers more than likely figure out how to blow this all up in our faces — there’s only one thing left to say: See you on Broad St.