At the ripe age of 41, LeBron James still managed to hold the basketball world hostage and shock it, announcing he’s signing with the Philadelphia 76ers after weeks of deliberation.
He joins forces with the newly-acquired Jaylen Brown, and familiar postseason foes of the Knicks, Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid.
With this move, some oddsmakers have Philly neck-and-neck or even ahead of New York to take the East in 2026-27. Are the 76ers now a true threat to the reigning champions?
You look over their roster on paper and it reads like a 12-year-old’s NBA 2K franchise jumped the shark. Four All-Star level guys who peak a tier higher when healthy, flanked by a rising prospect in V.J. Edgecombe and some solid depth pieces in Anfernee Simons and Dean Wade, is nothing to scoff at.
Their deep bench has some lottery tickets as well, with Dominick Barlow, rookie Labaron Philon Jr., and former Knick Ariel Hukporti. Barring a bad string of injuries, they should be able to piece together a reliable eight-to-nine man group for the postseason. Brown and James bring real championship mettle. Their top four are high-IQ players who can all create for themselves and others, and if they’re able to sacrifice their individual scoring they won’t be an easy group to guard.
If Maxey and Brown are the primary creators, they have roll and pop opportunities for days with James and Embiid. James can also be the screen man in any combination and facilitate himself in an offense that can pressure the paint and theoretically spread the floor five-out.
There’s enough production here to have different options carry them through the regular season, then come the postseason they can be deadly if everybody is bought in. Embiid and James will have to revert back to their defense from a few years ago come that time, but if they can Philly has no ceiling.
On the flip side, they still have plenty of questions.
It will take a lot of sacrifice and experimentation to get the offensive cohesion right, especially among four guys who have stakes in being lead initiators.
Not only will the hierarchy be blurry to start, but Brown, James, and Embiid will have to put up career shooting years to punish defenses for packing the paint. All three like to operate out of the mid-post, but their biggest test will come on the other end.
Embiid hasn’t been an elite defensive anchor in years, James has backtracked on that end, and the guards plus Brown don’t make up much ground there. The Sixers can skate by during the regular season but would need to stack all-out performances together in the playoffs to advance far.
The biggest time bomb on the roster is their health, especially Embiid’s and James'. The former hasn’t played 40 ore more games in three seasons, with two young backups, while the latter is fighting his own battles now playing professionally for over 20 consecutive years.
Meanwhile, the Knicks are coming off one of the most dominant postseason runs in recent NBA history, which included sweeping a slightly dissimilar Sixers team. Sure, they’ve made additions, but four more wins of them?
There will likely need to be some trial-and-error before we get to truly judge this team’s chances. As we’ve seen from the 2013 Lakers, the James Harden-Kawhi Leonard-Paul George Clippers, the 2021 Nets, and 2024 Suns, a super-team lacking cohesion or injury luck is as susceptible to complete failure than to legitimate contention.
The Knicks have proven themselves to be championship caliber and shouldn’t be written off to underdog status until proven otherwise. But Philadelphia is coming for the throne, and won’t be as easy to beat this time.
