Twenty-three seasons into his career, across three franchises before Philadelphia, LeBron James has never simply entered a new roster. His star power and on-court dominance have rearranged almost every. Think Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, stars who reorganized their games once he walked into their locker room. This summer, at 41, he did it again, agreeing to a two-year, $8 million contract with the Philadelphia 76ers. He now walks into a Philadelphia core built around Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, newly acquired Jaylen Brown and rookie VJ Edgecombe — a 21-year-old Bahamian guard nicknamed “The Generator” after the actual one that once kept the lights on for his family back in Bimini, fresh off the biggest rookie debut in franchise history.
But whether that pattern repeats in Philadelphia and ends up targeting Edgecombe much more harshly than others is now an open question around the league, one a former lottery pick, Kwame Brown, answered bluntly this week. And in doing so, Brown also looped in his son Bronny James.
“I thought LeBron was a regular individual, and then I realized he’s a part of a group, and LeBron is a machine,” Brown said on The Basketball Show. “It’s a marketing machine. He’s not an individual. And so once I realized that when you go up against a machine, it gives off toxic waste. So what’s made to look good, it destroys things around it.
“And if you look at the careers that he’s destroyed, Westbrook, all the way before he even started. You got Dalton Knecht because of his son, he didn’t get a chance to develop. And he has he comes there with Andrew Wiggins, the number one draft pick. He gets them to make up stories about him to trade him for Kevin Love. I know what that’s like and I when I see him go places, I’m like, ‘Okay, I want to know which player is gonna have to be taken away from for this machine to still look like what it is.'”
Beginning with Wiggins, Cleveland took him first overall in 2014, the same summer James announced his return from Miami. NBA rules forbid trading a rookie within 30 days of signing, and the moment that window closed, on August 23, Cleveland flipped Wiggins and Anthony Bennett to Minnesota for Kevin Love. Wiggins never played a game for the team that drafted him.
Whether “stories” were manufactured about him, as Brown alleges, or the trade logic was simply obvious once James came home is hard to settle now, but it fueled real gossip at the time, including reports that James had personally lobbied Love to make the move.
Westbrook’s case is harder to reduce to a single season, especially when the circumstances surrounding his Lakers tenure are considered. The Lakers acquired him in August 2021 to pair with James and Anthony Davis, but the experiment unraveled, and Los Angeles traded him in a February 2023 three-team deal that brought back D’Angelo Russell from Minnesota and Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt from Utah.
But before that, there had been reports in 2022 that the Lakers’ front office internally blamed pressure from Klutch Sports, which represents LeBron and Davis, for the Westbrook acquisition. As for whether Westbrook’s career was destroyed and who might be to blame, all of it cannot go through the Lakers alone. In the end, a nine-time All-Star and former MVP was traded five times over his career, as he bounced through the Clippers, Nuggets, and Kings before retiring after the 2025-26 season.
As for Dalton Knecht, whom Brown links to Bronny James, the Lakers selected him 17th overall in the 2024 NBA Draft, and he quickly became a regular part of the rotation. Knecht appeared in 78 games as a rookie, averaging 19.2 minutes and shooting 37.6% from three. His second season, though, was a different story. Through 54 games, his minutes fell to 10.2 per night, and his three-point percentage dropped to 34.2%. By December 2025, the Lakers had assigned him to the G League for the first time. On December 15, 2025, the Lakers assigned him to the G League for the first time, with JJ Redick saying the move would give Knecht an opportunity to play and get meaningful repetitions.
But Bronny’s second season, too, was split between Los Angeles and South Bay. By December 2025, Bronny had appeared in 10 of the Lakers’ first 15 games, averaging 2.1 points, 0.9 rebounds, and 1.8 assists in 11.1 minutes, and the Lakers continued moving him between the NBA and G League throughout the season.
Now, by the summer of 2026, the situation had become a broader roster crunch, with reports identifying Knecht, Bronny and Jaden Hardy as contenders for the final roster spot, with one Lakers insider calling Knecht “the most expendable” of the three. How much of that implies that Knecht “didn’t get a chance to develop” is on the reader now.
That said, Brown sees a similar possibility in Philadelphia.
“And we know now it’s VJ Edgecombe, and it’s going to be the center, Embiid. Embiid doesn’t play 70 games or 65 games, and they don’t win the championship; it’s going to be Edgecombe or Embiid.”
Former players turned analysts have already raised concerns about what the arrival of LeBron James and other high-usage stars could mean for VJ Edgecombe’s development. Kwame Brown previously argued that the young guard may have to sacrifice his own opportunities for the bigger picture, saying, “They want VJ Edgecombe to accept this role… have somebody take shots that’s supposed to be your shots for two years to help his legacy.”
Draymond Green voiced a similar concern, questioning whether Edgecombe’s role could shrink with a crowded starting lineup featuring four established All-Stars. “If I’m VJ Edgecombe’s agent, I’m not sure I’m happy with the summer that the 76ers have had,” Green said.
Jason Williams took the speculation a step further, suggesting Edgecombe could eventually become a trade piece if Philadelphia looks to add more depth to its bench.
James’ Philadelphia chapter begins October 20, when he makes his Sixers debut against the defending champion Knicks at Madison Square Garden. What happens to Edgecombe’s role once the five share the floor will be one of the season’s early questions.