LeBron 8.19.26
LeBron James has won a championship with every organization he has been part of. Are the Sixers next?
Bob Donnan/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
If I told you in June that one of my August mailbags had this headline, would you have believed me?
For whatever it is worth, it felt bizarre to type those words, in complete earnest, about a team that has not even won half of its games over the last two seasons.
That the last two years of complete chaos have turned into the situation the Sixers now find themselves in – full-blown championship players, with the NBA's all-time leading scorer, LeBron James, and the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, Jaylen Brown, on board – is hard to fathom.
There is no reason to waste any time. This week's Sixers mailbag includes an answer to the question in today's headline and more:
From @kenny1130: Is anything less than winning the Eastern Conference a disappointing season?
We are about one month away from Media Day, and there is no doubt several Sixers – especially key players – will be asked if they need to win a championship for this to be a successful season. Some of those players will dodge the question; the bolder ones will face it head-on and say that, yes, this team's singular focus is winning a championship. None of those players will be breaking any news.
The Sixers unquestionably have the requisite talent to make the NBA Finals; they probably have enough firepower to win it all. More importantly, they do not have tons of time: James will turn 42 years old during the middle of the regular season and any season in which Joel Embiid is available and dominant could be the last of its kind.
So the Sixers do not have that many cracks at this. But they have more than one. James signed a two-year contract with a player option for the 2027-28 season; as he announced he was joining the Sixers, he called it his "last decision," implying the remainder of his career will be spent in Philadelphia.
Since his decision was made, it has been pointed out on several occasions: each of James' free-agency arrivals have been followed up by championships... in two years.
James signed with the Miami Heat in 2010 and won his first ring in 2012. He returned to Cleveland in 2014, then secured his most meaningful championship in 2016. James signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, missed the playoffs on a 37-45 team and then won the 2020 NBA Finals.
Do not print any 2028 NBA Finals shirts with Sixers logos on them. But if the Sixers do not win the 2027 NBA Finals, they still have at least one more swing in them – provided nothing compromises the abilities of James or Embiid.
NBA teams experiencing major overhauls – even when they are clearly for the better – usually do not just click right away. James and Embiid both needing time off throughout the regular season will make it more challenging to build continuity in a loaded conference with a lot of teams that know their bread and butter in big games. The Sixers not making or winning the NBA Finals this season would obviously be a disappointment, but not an inherent failure.
What would make this season a failure is if the Sixers cannot enter the 2027 offseason reasonably confident about their championship competitiveness. If this entire thing goes up in smoke, there will be a major reckoning. If the Sixers prove to be an excellent team that just cannot quite figure it out in time to make a run through this season's playoff bracket, there will be reason for at least some optimism heading into next summer – even if it is rightfully accompanied by disappointment.
MORE: How should Nick Nurse stagger his stars?
From @rjankowich.bsky.social: Knowing how the roster has transformed since the draft, if you could go back in time and redo the draft, who would you take?
It is going to be a major challenge for Labaron Philon Jr., the No. 22 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, to carve out a regular rotation role for himself. It was not going to be easy to begin with, despite Sixers President of Basketball Operations Mike Gansey and head coach Nick Nurse both asserting confidently that Philon has enough ability to play right away.
Yes, the Sixers have James now, in addition to a group of potential ball-handlers which includes Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe and Anfernee Simons, plus ball-dominant scorers in Brown and Embiid. But it is not as if the Philon pick was going to fill a specific need before free agency began. Sure, it would have been easier to imagine a crafty, offensive-oriented guard like Philon making waves on the Sixers two months ago, but the Sixers picked him because they thought he was the best prospect on the board.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, knowing the influx of ball-handling talent this team was going to add, the answer here is that if the Sixers could go back in time and redo the draft, they should take whichever prospect available they believed was going to turn into the best player. It certainly seems like Philon would be the guy regardless.
Philon not being a rotation regular as a rookie would not be a doomsday scenario. No first-round pick wants to ride the bench or spend time in the G League as their welcome to the NBA, but there is no reason Philon cannot survive not logging many NBA minutes in 2026-27. At the very least, the makeup of this roster suggests Philon should be in line to dominate the ball in garbage-time scenarios; that could be an incredibly fun subplot of this season.
Simons is on a two-year deal with a player option for next season that he certainly would like to decline. Perhaps the best possible scenario for all parties involved is that Simons plays so well that, in giving the Sixers a major bench boost, he prices them out of retaining him next summer, leaving a bench guard role vacated for Philon.
In any case, there are probably players the Sixers could have picked over Philon that would have better chances of contributing to this year's team. But if Philon is a more valuable long-term piece, that is not an issue. The Sixers clearly believe Philon has a bright future, and as long as that remains their belief, they have no reason to jump into a time machine.
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