LeBron James to the 76ers? Why Jaylen Brown could help lure The King to Philly

On Tuesday afternoon, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, who has his hand as close to the LeBron James NBA pulse as any reporter out there, issued the following advice to all would-be James suitors. 

“If you want LeBron, you’ve got to go make a move,” Windhorst reported. “And I don’t mean bringing LeBron in [for a meeting]. Make a move to improve your team. And then you get his attention.”

Windhorst wasn’t talking about the kind of margin move every team is making or trying to make to improve their team. He was talking a splash move. One that genuinely moves the championship needle. On Wednesday night, the Philadelphia 76ers stormed through the back door to make that exact kind of move — sending Paul George and four total draft picks (two firsts and two seconds) to the Boston Celtics in exchange for Jaylen Brown. 

Was it enough to get LeBron’s attention?

It sounds like the Sixers hope so. According The Athletic, they have “thrown their hat into the proverbial ring” to acquire LeBron’s services on the heels of their Brown heist. And yes, it was a heist. Typically a team trading for an All-NBA player in the middle of his prime has to gut its roster to do so, but independent of the picks involved, the Celtics were willing to do it for a straight-up George swap. 

Jaylen Brown trade grades: 76ers get ‘A+’ for landing Celtics star as Boston makes baffling decision

Sam Quinn

Why did the Celtics trade Brown for this package?

Was that because they found themselves backed into the corner of a soft market, and had burned the bridge they needed to get back to square with Brown? Or was it because Brad Stevens quietly agrees, at least to an extent, with the nerd-number mob that has long painted Brown in a most unflattering analytical light? In the clip below, Windhorst hints at the latter. 

Even the most fervent Brown supporter would have a hard time explaining some of these numbers. Over the last two years there have been 25 different All-NBA players, and Brown is the only one to have a negative career net rating in both the regular and postseason. 

For all the credit Brown received for the Celtics’ surprising run to the No. 2 seed this season despite the absence of Jayson Tatum for most of the campaign, both the offense and defense were better, on paper, when he was on the bench, and the team was 9-2 when he didn’t play at all. This is in keeping with a startling career-long trend of the Celtics being better without Brown than with him, as is plainly laid out below by Yahoo’s Tom Haberstroh. 

All of this is to say, Brown probably isn’t impactful enough to warrant the supermax contract he comes with, and the Celtics realized that. So did a lot of other teams, which is why they had to settle for Philadelphia’s uninspiring package. But hey, one team’s trash is another’s treasure, and in Brown, the Sixers absolutely stumbled into a pot of gold.

Brown might not be 1A material, but he’s proven to be a championship player. Brown, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, is right to have recently pointed out that he has more combined regular and postseason wins than any player in the league during his 10 years. He’s a winner. Always has been. If you think that’s because he’s had great teammates, well, nobody wins at the rate Brown has without elite support. 

But fine. Even if you want to kneel at the altar of the spreadsheet gods, and totally dismiss how great a player Brown to cast him as a system- and support-dependent star, well, guess where else he’s going to have great support? With the Sixers. 

The projected starting lineup on this team looks great: Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Brown, Dean Wade and Joel Embiid. The Sixers are lacking quality depth, but they have over $10 million in space under their hard cap. with $6 million left to use of their midlevel exception and a $4.2 million trade exception. 

Why LeBron would be a perfect on-court fit in Philly

At present, the Sixers have 13 players on the roster. All LeBron has to do is say the word, and he would slot right into one of those exceptions and become the 14th, which is the minimum number of players a team has to carry. Imagine swapping LeBron into that lineup above for Wade, who could then bolster a bench highlighted by Adem Bona, Dominick Barlow, Justin Edwards and first-round pick Labaron Philon Jr. 

It’s still a pretty thin and unproven set of reserves after the loss of Quentin Grimes, Andre Drummond and Kelly Oubre, which is particularly problematic given Embiid’s injury risk with only Bona and Ariel Hukporti behind him, but there’s talent in there. 

For years, the Sixers have been entirely dependent on Embiid staying healthy, and the same will be true for this team in terms of competing for a championship. But Brown gives them more leeway in the regular season, and LeBron would do more of the same. 

Plus, it’s not like LeBron wouldn’t have to cross his fingers on the health front if he were to sign with the Warriors, who now might have to rethink their revealed stance on not trading for Anthony Davis. Like Windhorst reported, if you want LeBron, go make a big move. The Sixers did that. And now they have everyone’s attention.