Four months after the OKC Thunder swept the Lakers out of the second round, LeBron James sat his daughter down and told her he would not be home as much. On Monday in Camden, wearing Philadelphia red for the first time, he made the cost of that conversation public.
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“I didn’t leave my family to lose in the second round,” James said, closing his first 76ers media availability. He had just drawn a line between a franchise that does the daily work and one that looks formidable on paper and then fades away in May.
The Sixers have not escaped the second round since Allen Iverson’s 2001 Finals run. Last spring the Lakers, with James still in the building, were swept in four. He did not name Los Angeles. He did not have to. The sentence did the work.
LeBron James also made it clear that he already knows what arrives with him. “The noise is going to be the noise, and it’s going to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled now that I’m here. I understand that.” A 41-year-old on a two-year, $8 million deal, joining Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown, was never going to slip in quietly. He is not asking for it to be quiet.
The player who helped pull him east was already in the room. James called Maxey a “main deciding factor.” They talked at length about the environment in Philadelphia, where the franchise is headed, and what James’s presence would actually do to it.
“I had a list of five teams I was interested in,” he said. “I think you saw my agent and his little whiteboard – whatever, I love him to death.” He laughed, then dropped what seems to be a shot at Lakers: “Some people can’t handle what I bring to the table.”
Maxey had been on the phone the moment James told the Lakers he was leaving. They share an agency. They have trained together for years. James said he picked Maxey’s brain on whether his arrival would be a plus or a negative.
That is the same standard he just applied to second-round exits. He did not relocate part of his family, take a massive pay cut, and pick one of five contenders so this group can look elite in October and disappear in May.
Playing alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown is the basketball reason the move exists. James said he “can’t wait to play with” Embiid and wants to be “that final little piece” that helps the MVP get over the hump.
The July conversation with Zhuri and the Monday podium statement are the same sentence. He left. He expects the work that makes the leaving worth it.