Emergency Pod: LeBron To The Sixers!

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Even the emergency episodes are presented by DraftKings. LeBron James and the Sixers will break it down for 12 minutes this summer. Whatever you're watching, baseball, golf, soccer, racing, DraftKings has you covered for every single moment of it. The DraftKings app is now available in all 50 states. Bring in the game straight to your fingertips. Wherever you are, from Florida to Texas to California, you're in on the excitement at the speed of sports. Follow every buzzer beater, every walk-off, every photo finish. Sweat the moments that matter in real time with a seamless experience built for the biggest season of the year. No matter where you're watching, you're always connected and in the game with one app. New DraftKings customers. Sign up with the code Ryan. That's R-Y-E-N. And spend five bucks to get $100. $150 in rewards within 14 days includes all markets. That's code Ryan, R-Y-E-N, in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Bet with DK Sportsbook. Gambling problem? 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But I'm also impressed that Philadelphia pulled this off. I thought a big part of LeBron making this decision would be a place where he felt comfortable, a place where he'd had a relationship before. So that obviously a lot of roads leading to Miami and clearly with Cleveland. But it's very easy now that we know, well, why would you want to make the bet with Cleveland if he's going to be off the ball with Mitchell and Hartman? Harden there when it's like, well, look, he was going to be off the ball in a lot of different situations. And we'll get to the Philadelphia sharing of the basketball situation here as well. Now that we know that it isn't Miami, I mean, it's very simple to say, hey, it's probably not a place that's a fully completed roster. And considering that Giannis has to be on the ball, which is great. I mean, when he's on the ball, he's one of the, I think, three best players in the world on top of his passing and the driving and the free throw attempts and all that kind of stuff. But. Is that the best fit if the rest of the roster doesn't feel like they have enough shooting, even if you were to look at, say, the basketball reference page of a lot of the players that are still on this heat roster and and bringing hard way where it's like, hey, there's some guys that have made some threes of this team. So maybe that's being a little overstated that they have no shooting. And if he hadn't gone to Philadelphia, you'd be like, hey, do you really want to make like is the Embiid playoff bet a better bet than the Harden playoff bet? Defensively, you probably have to figure out a way to hide him. A little bit more, although I think the league respects LeBron so much that they don't really attack him as much as they could. Or you would look at the Lakers roster he was on and say, well, we're going to go after Austin Reeves or they were going to go after Luca, which may have been the case in Cleveland where they're like, yeah, they're going to go after Harden or they're going to go after Donovan Mitchell first before they're going to go after LeBron. So it doesn't really matter with the Sixers. You'd probably want to attack a smaller backcourt in Maxie and B.J. if those are your starting five with Embiid and Jalen Brown before you want to attack LeBron anyway. So there's a bunch of different basketball stuff that we can get to. But I think I just kind of wanted to finish the thought on like maybe the reason he didn't want to go back to Cleveland is mess with the dream scenario on his return, his part two in Cleveland, winning a title for a city that was star for one. But do you really I don't get it. It's kind of the people that like knock Jordan for playing for the Wizards. When I look at the Wizards years is further confirmation of how special he was. Especially that second year with the Wizards and the numbers that he put up and how well he played, even though there was no playoff success. I don't look at those as a knock on on Jordan at all. So if LeBron and come back to Cleveland, they don't get out of, say, the second round. Does it mean like the title in 2016? Like no one can ever mess with that title. I still think it's the toughest title any team has ever pulled off in my lifetime of watching the NBA. So we can talk about the Philadelphia one ball part of this, which I'm sure you're going to hear a ton. Of but look, LeBron is a master at pacing himself, both not only in his career as he pushes the boundaries of longevity in this sport, but he also paces himself brilliantly throughout a basketball game. I mean, there are so many games that he's had with the Lakers where I'll look at him and he feels like he's taking entire eight minute sub pattern stretches off and he's completely fine deferring to somebody else. He doesn't want to bring the ball up. He hasn't brought up the ball in years. I mean, he can and he will randomly, but he's not going to be. He's not going to be the primary ball handler on any team that he was going to sign with. And that's definitely not the case here with Philadelphia because Max, you should have the ball a ton. But LeBron, I think through the regular season will do what he needs to do night in and night out and know that he's pacing himself for whatever hopes they have of a deep playoff run. So, yeah, I know there's one ball. I've looked at the usage rates for Maxie, for Jalen Brown, for LeBron, for Embiid. I mean, these are monster usage numbers for these players. I'm trying to put all four of them, but we're talking about LeBron James here, somebody who probably doesn't want the ball as much as you may think, at least for the six months in those 82 games and is smart enough to know how he needs to fit in because he's just such a brilliant basketball mind that it's not like he's not going to know what to do when Embiid's getting double. I mean, if we really want to paint the most optimistic brush on this, and maybe that's what LeBron did where he said, okay, best case scenario of anything, any of these potential landing spots, like best case. If everything went right in Philly, isn't that the best chance at this? And it probably is. Now, look, I think Minnesota would have made a lot more sense or San Antonio. I think Minnesota like desperately needed him. I think San Antonio would love to have somebody like him organizing their late playoff game possessions. There's a million possessions from the finals that I wish the Spurs could have a do over on. And LeBron would have been terrific with that. It's probably not the right fit. Probably didn't want, maybe he didn't want to live in San Antonio. Maybe he didn't want to live in Minnesota. Maybe he loves the idea that his family can be this close to New York City. And that's all that really matters, that he's going to be pretty close to, well, playing in the top two media markets, technically, though, not necessarily in Philadelphia, if you get the point. So if we're looking at this optimistically, maybe LeBron's just going like, what if though the Embiid part of this thing works out? And as far as like Jalen Brown's numbers, last year was an anomaly. Those numbers were going to happen if he came back and was with Boston playing with Tatum. So as great as Jalen Brown's individual season was, you can't look at his usage. You can't look at his shot attempts. You can't look at the points and expect that that was going to happen. Even had he stayed in Boston with Tatum coming back as the number one option, all those number one option possessions that Jalen Brown had all season long, that was by necessity. So him taking a step back statistically, I don't, I don't like, obviously it was going to happen in Philadelphia and LeBron maybe doesn't help those overall numbers. But the one thing I'm envisioning here, again, that's with a healthy engaged Embiid is what the fuck do you do when you're doubling Embiid? Cause you have a terrible defensive center matchup against him. You're doubling Embiid and he's looking around to a cutting LeBron, a cutting Jalen Brown, Maxie and VJ offering spacing. Obviously VJ's shooting has to get a little bit better or Maxie cutting off of that stuff. You know, I, I don't think it's a great bet because of Embiid's history here for the last few years. I would think he and his trainer would want to prioritize losing weight. To get through a season more than anything. I don't care about how jacked he is. I don't care about how many muscles he has. I don't care what his fat percentage is. I think him just being a slimmer player is the only way he turns this thing around because everything else is there. I don't even know that he needs to work on anything else. He's got probably the best touch of any big guy we've ever seen. His passing is actually incredible. I don't always love his comfort level late in a playoff game. And, you know, look, I do think that he's been so obsessed with the stats. Yeah. the points that he stops playing hoops and looks to be fouled a little bit more, which is his own problem. And, you know, I've already done that rant a million times, but if you're just looking at, you know, someone like LeBron coming in and going, oh, there's not enough basketballs to go around. I think LeBron adapts to that. And at this stage of his life, it's not like he needs 20 shots. This isn't a guy looking for his rookie max extension going, man, I hope I make it to an all-star team and I'm getting my 20, 80 games so I can get that big max deal. Even if it all feels fake on a bad team. So I don't think you have to worry about that stuff as much. And again, look, it all hinges on whether or not this team can win a championship. I do think the best case on paper scenario sounds a lot better now that we know that he's landed on Philadelphia. You know, the other thing that, you know, Philly fans are getting shit for is like acting like they just signed prime if you got LeBron James for two years at 8 million, you should be excited. Who gives a shit? We know that it isn't peak LeBron, but it's like you got LeBron James and there's a value in that that goes beyond how little you're paying him based on what he's always making. But what do you pay a guy like this anyway? Like in this market with no teams with cap space or teams with cap space that he'd want to go to, it was always going to be a weird number anyway, right? Um, but here's the thing that I would close on here is the mental part of the game. Is so important in how you think of yourselves as a team. And there's teams that tell you all the right things in training camp. I mean, get ready for a buckle up NFL. Every one of these teams, you're going to get the head coach out there in front of the people at their first mini camp being like, you know, we actually had seven one score losses. It's like, no shit. Every team in the NFL basically averages like seven to one score losses every season. Um, I, you can double, I'll check that number, but I'm pretty close. Cause I got so sick of hearing it. I'm like, isn't the whole point of this league that it's like always one score. So then you have some dog shit NFL team and the coach gets out there and training camp in July. And it's like, yeah, you know, we had all these one score loss, you know, bounce here, bounce there. It's like, I don't know. You guys might still stunk, might still stink. So to the point of like talking yourself into it and anybody that's ever kind of played sports, you know, there's, there's always that moment where you're like, are we going to lose? And it sucks, right? Versus when you walk into the gym and you're like, we're going to kill these guys. And sure. You can be overconfident. And then, you know, you can get into that whole thing of being too confident and that's what costs you a game. But there is a big, big difference. Like when a team can turn a corner mentally going like we've transitioned from hoping to win, to expecting to win. And with this Sixers group, which is certainly changed characters around him, bead multiple times now since what, 2018. And we started like thinking they really had something. Speaker 2: LeBron in your uniform in Philadelphia changes the buildup to next year from, well, you know, like we hope and look, I still have the same reservations that any of you sane NBA fans would have. Like, I'm not sitting here stamping a number one seed on them. I don't even know. I mean, could they be the three seed? Could they be the four seed? I mean, health will play a big part of that versus the health of everybody else in a stacked East. But like, let's look at it this way. The wizards are one of like the 11 teams that are going to win this season. And they're not going to be the only teams in the East that are going like we're expecting some things. Okay. But it's, it's a weird group with a bunch of young players and a number one pick coming in with Anthony Davis. It doesn't want to be there. Trey young. Who's there with that absurd contract. And it's like, you guys can say all the right things, but do you really believe it? LeBron in Philadelphia, I would guess makes you believe it. If you're maxi, if you're VJ, obviously I'm a little worried about VJ's opportunities with Jalen Brown and what he's already done. And maybe an accountability thing. Speaker 2: That's been talked about with Embiid with having Jalen Brown there. Well now with LeBron, like forget it. LeBron's not going to want you wasting his time. So forget getting him for 4 million, a pop here, forget getting him this late in his career. And what does that really mean? He's still played so well at this age that you, you really, it changes your mindset as a basketball team. Doesn't guarantee anything, but I granted when those guys break camp and get together and they're like, holy shit, he's really here. That's the biggest value of this kind of acquisition. And that's why Sixers fans should be pumped. you