EMERGENCY POD: LeBron Joins the 76ers

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**Wes Goldberg** (0:33)
LeBron James is going to Philadelphia, but can he really win a championship there? And what does this mean for the teams that missed out on them? Let's jump in.
All right, Wes Goldberg here with Mike Shearer. We are recording this emergency pod on a Friday afternoon. RealGM Radio usually off today, Mike, but we had to hop on here because just a few moments ago, LeBron James officially announced his decision on Twitter that he is signing with the Philadelphia 76ers.
A ton to get into in all of this, but I want to start with LeBron's own words here in a Twitter thread announcing his decision. So pretty short, I'm going to read it in full. I thought I was done when the season ended. I wasn't ready to announce it and I knew I needed some time to really decide, but I was pretty sure I played my last game. I was honest at that last press conference and I said I needed to look at myself and decide if I still love this game. I still truly do love this game and I have more to give. The last few weeks have been really special. I've never been able to have no clue what to do and take real time to just think. I've had an incredible few months with all the people I love trying to figure it all out. This is my last decision. I'm not going for money. I'm not going for family. What am I really playing for at this point? I still want to sacrifice, I still want to work, I still want to grind, I still want to compete to win and have a chance at feeling the feeling of winning another championship. I believe I can help make the 76ers a championship team and I'm so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time. Thank you to LA, Miami, I love you forever. Northeast Ohio will always be home. Mike, what was your initial reaction when you saw the news?

**Mike Shearer** (2:10)
Wow.
And I'm grateful it didn't come two seconds later. I was hovering over the send button at Basketball Poetry to send out a completely unrelated article. Well, not completely unrelated. A lot of it was tying down to the trickle down effects of LeBron James choosing to go to any of various locations. So if Shams or LeBron had been a few seconds slower, I would have looked real silly. Thank you guys for the timing there.

**Wes Goldberg** (2:33)
Similar. I was planning the Lockdown NBA Daily Show and I had been doing that all morning. And then 20 minutes before we started recording that at noon, we got this decision. I was like, okay. And just like you had to throw out all of my work from that morning and just start fresh. But look, I was surprised. I'll be honest. I didn't have Philadelphia as one of the top suitors here. And I just, I get it, you know, like it's a super talented roster.
I have my own questions about the basketball fit. And there's a number of things that I want to get into with you here, you know, whether or not the 76ers can win a championship with LeBron James, what this means for the teams that didn't get LeBron and whether this was the right decision for LeBron in the first place. But you know, I was always a little bit skeptical of the LeBron fit in Philadelphia, not to do the, hey, there's only one ball thing, but there really is a lot of guys who need the ball in their hands to be their best selves, right? Maxey, LeBron, Jalen Brown, Joel Embiid, obviously, and you've even got VJ Edgecomb there, who's gonna be wanting to spread his wings a little bit too. So I was like, I don't know, the basketball fit is a little bit clunky to me. They have a positional need for him, but I don't know if he's the right player there.