Hour 1: LeBron to Philly

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Hey babes, it's Paris Hilton. So I was checking my points balance in the Hilton Honors app the other day, and yeah, I've got about a billion, which feels excessive, even for me. Just kidding, you can never have too many Hilton Honors points. And I want to do something iconic this summer, so I'm giving away all my Paris points. Just find somewhere you've always wanted to stay, then go to my socials or Hilton's and tell me about it. Just make sure you're a Hilton Honors member, and I might be sending you Paris points, because when you want points that make your summer even hotter, it matters where you stay.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
This is The Michael Kay Show Podcast.

**Michael Kay** (0:34)
I gotta get more Kay.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:35)
Listen live weekdays at 1 on the Espn New York app and your smart speaker.

**Michael Kay** (0:44)
We thank you for joining us on this Friday. It's July 24th, 2026 Me and you for two, those are the rules of engagement. It's the fastest two hours in Sports Talk Radio. And you know the password, right? To be a co-host, you know it. 1-800-919-3776. Now, this is a free for all Friday, which we always have fun with. But the rules of the game change a little bit when during Ty Butler filling in for Chris Carlin, it was announced that LeBron James has made a decision, not like the decision when he left Cleveland to go to Miami, but a decision that was awaited by many by the NBA as a league, by teams that were going after him. And he made that decision. It's a little bit of a surprise, not a shocker, but a little bit of a surprise. He chose to join the Philadelphia 76ers, making them, I would think, the second best team in the East behind the New York Knicks. So I think the move puts them ahead of Detroit. I think it puts them ahead of Cleveland. And I believe it definitely puts them ahead of the Boston Celtics who made the trade that definitely made the Sixers a little bit more of a destination for LeBron than they might have been if Jalen Brown wasn't a member of Philadelphia. But let's take a look at the starting five for the Philadelphia 76ers for this upking season. You've got LeBron James, you've got Tyrese Maxey, you have Jalen Brown, you have VJ Edgecombe, and you have Joe Allen Beat. That is a championship caliber starting five. And I give a lot of credit to John Gansy, or Mike Gansy, I'm sorry, the new GM who swung the trade to get Jalen Brown, has a history of LeBron James. They were both high school players in Ohio during the same time, where Gansy finished second to LeBron James for the player of the year in high school. There's a picture of them when they were youngsters with Gansy's hand on LeBron's left shoulder, and now he's the GM of team that LeBron has decided to join. Money's not an issue here. They could have got more money in other places. The deal is for two years and eight million dollars. I mean, LeBron James, and I don't want to get into other people's pockets, you know, he's a billionaire. Now no one wants to be paid less than what they're worth, no matter how much money they have, but he came to the conclusion that, you know, there wasn't much space between aprons and caps and stuff like that for LeBron to get the big score. Ironically enough, the team that he could have had the biggest score with would have been the LA. Lakers, and he decided to leave them. So it came down to the Cavaliers, the Miami Heat, the Golden State Warriors, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Philadelphia 76ers. Now of all of them, which team gives them the best chance to win a championship?
I think it would probably have been Minnesota, just because of the presence of Anthony Edwards, and it's a great team that just always falls short. Now the one impediment with choosing the Timberwolves is you should still be in the West, and you've got to get by Oklahoma City and San Antonio to get to the finals. He doesn't have to do that in the East. In the East, he just has to get by the Knicks. And I don't think that Miami has enough if you have LeBron join Yannis and Bam. That's still not enough, because they had to trade so much to get Yannis. It's kind of a decimated team, that they're going to have to put together with small bits and pieces, and Pat Riley is really good at it, and they have a coach that's considered one of the best in the history of the game in Spalstra. But the bottom line is this, he took a while, and he chose the one that he thought gave him the best chance to get back to the finals. And the funny thing is, if the Knicks had fallen to the San Antonio Spurs in the finals, I guarantee you that today we would be talking about LeBron James being a member of the New York Knicks. I guarantee it, because LeBron James wants to be the final piece of the puzzle. He doesn't want to be an impediment to a puzzle that's already been completed, which is what the Knicks are. The Knicks are champions. The only thing LeBron could do would ride their coat-outs to a second straight championship, which would be great. Or it's hard to repeat, as we see over and over and over again. And the Knicks probably don't repeat, and LeBron has joined them, then all fingers would point to him as a difference in the championship team and the team that didn't make it all the way. So, he decided not to do that, and I don't blame him. You know, why join a rollicking party that was rollicking even before you got there? Now, his other choice would have been Golden State. Aesthetically, historically, fundamentally, it would have been a lot of fun to watch that group of players, all in their golden years and Golden State, put on a show every single night when they were healthy enough to play. But they're not good enough to get through the West. They're just not. They're not good enough to get by The Thunder. They're not good enough to get by Minnesota. They're not good enough to get by San Antonio. I don't think they're good enough to get by Denver.